The day after the Boston Bruins were eliminated by the 8th-seed Florida Panthers, the Hockey Gods helped the Ottawa Senators come up with one of the biggest “hold my beer” moments this offseason. In a weird turn of events, Snoop Dogg was announced as one of the bidders to purchase the Ottawa Senators by The Athletic’s Ian Mendes.
Let’s talk about it
In Ian’s article, he states that Snoop Dogg has aligned himself with the Neko Sparks consortium which is currently one of a handful of bidders for the Ottawa Senators. The Sparks group is based out of Los Angeles and is aiming to be the first Black NHL ownership group, as most of the members of the consortium are reported to be people of color.
This makes things interesting as the A-List celebrities interested in the team continue to add up, as Ryan Reynolds of the Remington Group Consortium is currently rumored to be the leading bidder at this moment in time.
Apparently, Snoop wants to be involved on a daily basis should he be part of the winning bid. It’s said that he plans on attending a “handful” of home games at the CTC, and possibly joining the TSN booth, like he’s done with the LA Kings.
Another thing that Ian Mendes mentioned in his article is that Snoop Dogg is passionate about making hockey more affordable and in particular wants to make attending games easier for visible minorities and lower-income neighborhoods, as those areas of potential fans have been a bit ignored by the sport.
Snoop Dogg has confirmed the rumors on his Instagram page with a recent post
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Who else is bidding?
It’s pretty much impossible to list every single person bidding for the Ottawa Senators, as everyone interested has signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and cannot share any information, but we can make a potential list of bidders based on publications from places like The Athletic and Post Media (thanks to Ian Mendes and Bruce Garrioch). Based on those two sources, here are some of the interested bidders:
- Remington Group Ft. Ryan Reynolds (Markham Based real estate developers)
- Michael Andlauer (Owner of OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs and 20ish% owner of the Montreal Canadiens)
- Kimel Group (Harlo Capital, former minority owners of Pittsburgh Penguins, sold their share recently and seem to be interested in being a majority owner of a pro hockey team instead)
- Neko Sparks Consortium (Group of approximately 16 people, based out of LA including but not limited to Snoop Dogg, Trevor Daley, Mattias Norstrom, etc. They were the highest bidders of the first round of bidding at approximately 900 million.)
- Vivek Ranadive (Owner of NBA’s Sacramento Kings)
- Steve Apostolopoulos (Toronto-based billionaire who also made a 6 billion dollar bid for the Washington Commanders of the NFL)
- Graeme Roustan (Owner of The Hockey News, but has been cut out of bidding due to sharing information despite having signed an NDA.)