The Las Vegas Desert Dogs is co-owned by four investors:
- Wayne Gretzky, the legendary hockey player
- Steve Nash, former NBA All-Star and current coach
- Dustin Johnson, top golfer and Gretzky’s son-in-law
- Joe Tsai, billionaire investor and co-founder of Alibaba
This article runs through the background of each of the investors and how they came to invest in a National Lacrosse League franchise.
Wayne Gretzky, Co-Owner
The name of Wayne Gretzky is synonymous with ice hockey. I won’t go into his stellar playing career here.
Instead, I’ll focus on his connections to lacrosse and to sports ownership.
Early success
Gretzky’s first entry into sports ownership was in 1985. He bought the Hull Olympics hockey team in a junior league in Quebec.
This turned out to be a successful business decision. He spent C$175K on the purchase and sold the club in 1992 for C$500K.
Football disappointment
His next foray was in 1991 was to prove to be ill-fated. Gretzky took a 20% stake in the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League.
Bruce McNall, owner of the NHL’s LA Kings, was the majority stakeholder with 60%. McNall had famously brought Gretzky from Canada to play for the Kings.
The third 20% was with comic actor John Candy. Some of his big Hollywood hits were ”Cool Runnings” and “Planes, Trains, And Automobiles”.
Unfortunately, the comedian died suddenly in 1994 when he was just in his early forties. Aside from that tragedy, Bruce McNall ran into massive financial difficulties in the early 1990s.
The club sold again in 1994 for $4.5 million. Given that the purchase price has been $5 million, the outcome was a loss. Although it could have been worse.
It’s fair to say that this venture was not a success, but that was through no fault of Wayne Gretzky. I wouldn’t be so sure about his next venture.
Hockey tribulations
The Coyotes have had a chequered history in the NHL. As the Phoenix Coyotes, the franchise ran into serious financial trouble in the late 1990s.
Wayne Gretzky bought a minority stake in 1991, with a real estate developer named Steve Ellman. Gretzky also took charge of operations of the hockey franchise.
The team continued to perform poorly on the field while having serious business issues off the field. There was a change of majority stakeholder in 2005 when Ellman sold to Jerry Moyes, a trucking magnate.
Another change was that Gretzky became head coach.
The performances on and off the field went from bad to worse. The club went bankrupt in 2009. Gretzky relinquished his shares and left the club.
Return to the Oilers
Gretzky started his NHL playing career with the Edmonton Oilers. He broke every record in the game in this era from 1979 to 1988.
There’s a life-sized statue of him holding the Stanley Cup outside the grounds.
Eighteen years after departing the club, he returned to take a role as partner in the business. He stepped away in 2021 to become a studio analyst.
Buying the Las Vegas Desert Dogs
Gretzky learned from his agent in 2019 that Joe Tsai was interested in setting up a new box lacrosse franchise in the NLL.
The hockey star jumped on a Zoom call with Tsai who was in Hong Kong at the time. When Gretzky decided to get involved, he then spoke to his son-in-law, Dustin Johnson.
But before we get to Johson, let’s look at Steve Nash.
Steve Nash, Co-Owner
Steve Nash is the coach of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.
He was also an eight-time All-Star in his stellar career in the NBA. The Canadian is one of the greatest point guards in history.
Like Gretzky, we won’t dwell on his playing days. But let’s take a look at his history of sports ownership.
Nash’s family has a long history of involvement with soccer. His father was born in Tottenham, England. That’s the home of the historic soccer club, Tottenham Hotspurs (aka Spurs). Steve followed his father in being a lifelong fan of Spurs.
Vancouver Whitecaps
Steve’s brother played soccer for the Vancouver Whitecaps and had thirty caps for the Canadian national team.
Steve met Jeff Mallett, a former COO of Yahoo!, at a charity event in 2005. Both men were raised in Victoria, British Columba, and shared a love of soccer. The duo put together a bid to buy Spurs, which didn’t work out.
They then approached the owner of the Vancouver Whitecaps to take a minority stake in the Canadian soccer club.
Expanding to Spain
Some years later in 2016, Nash became a minority owner of a Spanish soccer team in Mallorca (RCD Mallorca).
One of his co-owners is Robert Sarver who is a co-owner of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.
How Nash came to lacrosse
So, what’s Steve Nash’s connection to lacrosse? Well, he grew up in British Columbia so would be very familiar with the sport.
But his route to investing in a professional club was through his relationship with Joe Tsai, the owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets. Of course, Nash is the team coach.
Tsai has substantial investments in lacrosse and is one of the co-owners of the Las Vegas franchise. Let’s look at him next.
Joe Tsai, Co-Owner
Joe Tsai’s first investment in the National Lacrosse League was to buy an expansion franchise in San Diego.
He purchased the club in the NLL in August 2017 and the team’s first season in 2018/19.
Tsai is also an investor and co-owner of the Premier Lacrosse League.
We have a longer bio of Tsai’s business background in our article on who owns the San Diego Seals.
As I mentioned before, he owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets. Tsai and his wife are also owners of the New York Liberty in the WNBA.
Dustin Johnson, Co-Owner
Dustin Johnson is from South Carolina and is one of the world’s top golfers.
He won the U.S. Open in 2016 and the Masters in 2020. He was also World Number 1 for over a year.
So, why would a golfer invest in a lacrosse club? Well, Johnson’s wife Paulina is the daughter of Wayne Gretzky. So, this investment is partly a family thing.
The golf world was shocked when Johnson ditched the PGA to join the new Saudi Arabian golf league. I mean, a guy’s gotta make more money, right?
I don’t follow golf much, but I don’t like to see a historic sport tear itself apart. It hasn’t been an edifying sight to watch multi-millionaires rush to get involved with a breakaway league with questionable sponsors.
I know some lacrosse fans like to gripe about the Rabil brothers for starting the breakaway Premier Lacrosse League. But there’s no comparison with this new golf league and its ownership group.
This brings me to another odd aspect of the quartet of owners of the Desert Dogs. Two of them were diametrically opposed in their beliefs at one time. Let’s take a quick look.
Nash And Gretzky – The Odd Couple
Steve Nash and Wayne Gretzky had a significant connection before becoming co-owners of the Desert Dogs.
As two sporting icons from Canada, they were part of the ceremony to light the Olympic cauldron at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
But let’s go back to 2003 and turbulent times in the world. This was the start of the invasion of Iraq.
Nash stood out as being fiercely opposed to the war. He rocked up to the All-Stars game in a t-shirt saying “No War. Shoot for Peace”.
The owners of large sports franchises tend to be both rich and conservative. The NBA certainly didn’t back Steve Nash in his stance.
On the other hand, Wayne Gretzky was a strong supporter of how George W. Bush handled the conflict.
Canada declined to join the United States in the invasion. But Gretzky was fulsome in his praise of the American President. How fulsome?
Here’s what he said at a Ronald MacDonald children’s charity event (odd place to discuss an impending war but that was down to the journalists):
The President of the United States is a great leader, I happen to think he’s a wonderful man and if he believes what he’s doing is right, I back him 100 percent.
Wayne Gretzky, Globe And Mail (2003)
Twenty years later, these two Canadians became co-owners of a lacrosse team. So, it’s true what they say: sport brings people together!
