In 2012, McCourt made headlines by selling the Los Angeles Dodgers for a significant amount. Since then, he has been strategically expanding his business and media empire, and is now in the process of forming a consortium to acquire TikTok.
Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Frank McCourt —best known as the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers—has placed a bid to buy TikTok through a group he started called Project Liberty, which is advocating that user data be owned by users rather than by tech giants like TikTok parent ByteDance, Meta and Alphabet. Project Liberty announced in May 2024 that it was organizing a bid. Then on Thursday, January 9 it said that it had made an official offer, dubbed the People’s Bid for TikTok.
McCourt and Project Liberty made the offer in partnership with investment bank Guggenheim Securities, law firm Kirkland & Ellis and a consortium of investors—including Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and several of the leading technologists already participating in the Project Liberty initiative. The dollar amount of the offer wasn’t disclosed, but Project Liberty’s plan would also require debt financing from “one of the largest banks in the United States.”
McCourt has a track record of heavy criticism of tech giants, especially of Chinese-owned TikTok. “We have to break the model or evolve the model into one where it returns the control, the agency, the choice, the ownership and the rights to individuals,” McCourt, who is 70, told Forbes in November 2023. “It's either really Chinese tech or American. Those are your choices.”
McCourt’s consortium claimed to have more than $20 billion in commitments from its investors, per a December press release. That figure is what McCourt thinks TikTok is worth, he told the New York Times on January 10, and is on the lower end of estimated valuations from analysts and executives. (TikTok likely generates less than 15% of the estimated $120 billion annual revenue at ByteDance, a company that Forbes values at more than $230 billion.)
ByteDance has yet to make a public statement regarding the offer and has not indicated any plans to sell TikTok's operations in the United States, nor clarified what would be included in such a sale. However, during oral arguments on January 10, the Supreme Court appeared inclined to support the federal law prohibiting TikTok unless it separates from ByteDance.
“In a press release from January, McCourt stated, ‘Maintaining the platform without depending on the existing TikTok algorithm and steering clear of a ban will allow millions of Americans to keep enjoying it.’ He added, ‘We are eager to collaborate with ByteDance, President-elect Trump, and the new administration to finalize this agreement.’”
A fter selling the Los Angeles Dodgers, McCourt spent most of the past decade focused on investing the approximately $850 million in proceeds from the team’s 2012 sale via his company McCourt Global. He sprinkled money into sports, real estate, technology, media and an investment firm focused on private credit. In January 2023, McCourt stepped down as CEO of McCourt Global to focus on Project Liberty but remains executive chairman and 100% owner. McCourt’s assets are worth an estimated $1.4 billion, landing him on Forbes’ billionaires list for the first time this year—though his wealth is a far cry from the estimated $230 billion valuation of ByteDance. He plans to raise money from foundations, endowments, pension funds and the general public as part of his plan to shift users’ accounts to a protocol that gives them more control of their digital identities and data, according to Semafor.
The TikTok bid could run into competition, some from the very same tech giants that are the subject of McCourt’s criticism of the world’s tech infrastructure. McCourt is no stranger to longshot plans, given Project Liberty’s broad mission.
"Approach the situation with the mindset that everything is achievable, and from there, we can confront the obstacles as they arise, tackling them individually," he remarked towards the end of last year regarding his efforts to transform technology. "Ultimately, we can't be certain that any of this will yield success."
McCourt's entrepreneurial journey began in 1893 with the establishment of the McCourt Company by his great-grandfather, a construction firm located in Boston. He pursued higher education at Georgetown University, earning a degree in economics in 1975. Afterward, he returned to Massachusetts, where he began developing real estate in the Boston Seaport area in the 1980s.
He tried to buy his beloved Boston Red Sox in 2001 but lost the bid to billionaires John Henry and Tom Werner. A few years later, he reportedly used 24 acres of land on the South Boston Waterfront land as collateral to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers at an enterprise value of $371 million in 2004. His controversial tenure as the Dodgers’ owner, which included allegations of financial mismanagement and tax avoidance, ended with the team filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2011. McCourt sold the Dodgers for $2.2 billion in 2012, the largest sports sale in history at the time, netting him approximately $850 million in cash, after taxes and a highly litigious divorce.
During this period, McCourt liquidated the majority of his Boston real estate, primarily in 2006, and started to broaden his investment portfolio. Currently, his real estate assets comprise a group of properties situated in the upscale Dallas Design District, as well as investments in various commercial and residential properties across California, Texas, and London. (In 2022, McCourt Global divested a share in a Miami development for $363 million.)
He’s also continued to invest in sports: In 2014, McCourt Global bought a 50% share of the Global Champions League and Tour, one of the equestrian world’s most well-known show-jumping competitions, which he sold for an undisclosed sum in 2022. Four years after the Dodgers sale, McCourt also bought storied French soccer club Olympique de Marseille for approximately $50 million. He’s since invested heavily in the team, which generated more than $200 million in revenue in the 2021-2022 season, though the team has lost hundreds of millions since McCourt purchased it, the Athletic reported. Around the same time, McCourt founded a private-credit-focused investment firm, MGG Investment Group, which grew from $300 million under management in 2016 to $5.6 billion in 2023.
In 2013, McCourt made a significant contribution of $100 million to help establish the Georgetown School of Public Policy, his alma mater, and followed it up with another $100 million pledge in 2021.
During that time, McCourt became progressively concerned about the ownership of data by users, as he discovered that a significant portion of the data sought by researchers at Georgetown was inaccessible to them.
“Within the school lies a vast data institute,” McCourt stated. “We realized that providing data access would be beneficial for policy makers, but we soon discovered that the crucial data they require is inaccessible due to its control by major tech corporations. … Those in power in Washington either failed to grasp the implications of technology and personal data, or they chose to ignore it, influenced by the financial contributions from these large, affluent platforms that have lobbyists and supporters everywhere.”
In 2021, McCourt initiated Project Liberty, aimed at enhancing research, policy advocacy, and technology investments to empower individuals with greater control over their data and digital identities, as stated by Tomicah Tillemann, the project's president and acting CEO. The initiative includes a research partnership with the French university Sciences Po, Georgetown, and Stanford, which finances projects focused on data ownership and social media dynamics. Advocacy efforts manifest through various events, including those centered around McCourt's book on this topic—“Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity and Dignity in the Digital Age”—co-authored with CoinDesk’s Michael Casey and released in March.
Up until now, the technology branch of Project Liberty has focused on a concept known as the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP). This open-source protocol enables users to have ownership of their data and facilitates connections across various platforms. McCourt compared DSNP to the functionality of a phone number that remains consistent across different carriers, with each number being uniquely associated with an individual user. In 2022, McCourt spearheaded a $27 million funding round for MeWe, a web3-based platform boasting 20 million users.
The sustainability of the economic model for a decentralized protocol remains uncertain—there is still insufficient research and no scalable solution that can compete with the current tech giants. However, McCourt’s plan to transfer a portion of TikTok users’ data to DSNP represents a significant advancement for his initiative.
It remains uncertain how much McCourt has contributed to the initiative thus far, the specifics of how his $500 million pledge will be allocated, and whether any portion of it will be used for a TikTok acquisition. However, one thing is clear: McCourt, who is the primary financier of the organization that has already distributed nearly $100 million from its nonprofit side according to its most recent tax report, is determined to make this his legacy for future generations. “I’m fortunate to have seven children,” he stated during the launch of his book in March 2024. “Let me tell you: that’s what I’m advocating for.”
