The Calgary Roughnecks have had one change of ownership since the team was founded in 2001.
The current owners bought the franchise when it was going through financial difficulties. The ownership group is made up of some very wealthy Canadian businessmen.
This article looks at their background and how the team changed hands back in 2012.
Who Owns The Roughnecks?
The Calgary Roughnecks in the National Lacrosse League are owned by a private company called Calgary Sports and Entertainment.
The four major stakeholders in the company are some of the wealthiest businessmen in Canada:
- Murray Edwards
- Alvin Libin
- Allan Markin
- Jeff McCaig
Three partners at the time of purchasing the club have since died (they weren’t young):
- Jack McCaig (father of Jeff)
- Clay Riddell
- Byron Seaman
Calgary Sports and Entertainment are best known for owning the NHL’s Calgary Flames.
Many fans of professional sports franchises fret about whether owners will run out of spare cash to splash on vanity projects like a sports team.
Let’s take a look at each of the major stakeholders to see how close they are to the breadline!
Murray Edwards, Co-Owner
Murray Edwards is a Canadian billionaire involved in oil and gas, aerospace, and holiday resorts.
Edwards co-founded Canadian Natural in 1989 with his business partner Allan Markin. The company is the largest Canadian producer of heavy crude oil. It’s also a huge producer of natural gas.
Edwards is a majority stakeholder in Magellan Aerospace, a firm that supplies Boeing, Bombardier, and Airbus. He also owns a string of ski resorts in Canada.
Forbes has valued him at a net worth of US$1.5 billion. Those are deep pockets.
But don’t expect to see Edwards too often at the Flames, let alone the Roughnecks. He moved to London in 2016 and has since relocated to St Moritz in Switzerland.
Allan Markin, Co-Owner
Allan Markin co-founded Canadian Natural with Murray Edwards. He took the role of chairman for over twenty years, before stepping down in 2012.
The Calgary Herald reported in 2016 that Allan Markin’s net worth was $670 million.
We mentioned that fans can worry that owners will stop spending their money on frivolous stuff like sports. But Markin has different standards.
In 2006, he spent a lot of money to go to court over custody of a loved one. There were two million dollars at stake.
Are you thinking – people will do anything to keep access to their kids? But this wasn’t for a child. It was for a rather elderly family dog.
The other party was his son-in-law to whom he’d given the dalmation as a pet when the boy was thirteen.
The judge ordered that the dog should take turns staying with two men. Apparently, the poor dog wasn’t asked her opinion.
But that was a long time ago. Some more recent events are a little more concerning for Roughnecks fans.
Markin set up a not-for-profit health company in 2007. Part of its remit was to develop health treatments to remove heavy metals from blood. The Pure North foundation was given 10 million dollars by the Province of Alberta.
In recent years, CBC has published several articles that question the efficacy of the treatments and the regularity of the funding. I’m not going to get into this much more, because lawsuits are flying around.
If we look at this strictly from the point of sports ownership, could these events undermine the financial backing for the Roughnecks?
No. To my knowledge, the other co-owners aren’t involved in this controversy. Let’s move on and look at another one.
Alvin Libin, Co-Owner
Alvin Libin founded a private investment firm that finances real estate and oil and gas ventures. One of his landmark projects was the International Hotel of Calgary, which sold in 2015.
Libin co-founded a company that developed nursing homes. This eventually became Extendicare, which operates across Canada, the U.S., and the United Kingdom.
The Libin family makes very large donations to healthcare, particularly in cardio research.
There really isn’t much more to say about Alvin Libin. He hasn’t got involved in much controversy in a long and prosperous life.
Jeff McCaig, Co-Owner
Jeff McCaig’s grandfather, Jack, was the co-founder of the Trimac trucking company in 1945.
Jeff’s father, Bud, became president of the company in 1961. He grew the company within the trucking industry and also expanded into the exploration of oil and gas.
It was Bud McCraig who was part of the original ownership group that purchased the Calgary Flames. Bud McCraig died in 2005.
Jeff was a lawyer who took over the reins of the family company in 1994.
Brad Banister, Former Owner
A company led by the current ownership group purchased the Calvary Roughnecks from Brad Banister in 2011.
Banister had led a smaller group of owners to buy an expansion franchise from the NLL in 2001. The Roughnecks had their first season in 2002.
The team had a tumultuous few years where Bannister went through four general managers in four seasons. But things finally settled down and the team became successful.
However, the club ran into financial difficulties in before the season started in 2011. Banister announced that monthly payments to the players would be delayed.
Banister put the team up for sale.
Basically, the financial strains are too great for me to handle anymore and it’s time for somebody else to step in.
Brad Banister, 2011
At first, there wasn’t a rush of takers for this challenge. Fans looked to the Calgary Flames, as there is a tradition of hockey teams owning a box lacrosse team.
Initially, the Flames owners weren’t interested. However, there was a lot of public and civic pressure to keep the Roughnecks in Calgary.
Ultimately, the Flames owners added the NLL franchise to their stable of sports teams.
