This summer, billionaire Mitchell Rales became the most recent major league sports team owner with Maine connections when he joined the ownership ranks of the Washington Commanders of the National Football League.
Rales, 67, a summer resident of Mount Desert Island for nearly 20 years, is part of a group led by fellow billionaire Josh Harris that bought the Commanders from former owner Dan Snyder this past July for $6 billion. A resident of suburban Washington, D.C., Rales and his brother Steven Rales earned their fortunes after founding Danaher Corp., a global diversified conglomerate.
Mitchell Rales followed his brother, who also summers on MDI, into the world of professional sports ownership. A few weeks ago Steven Rales, 72, increased his ownership stake in the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association from 5 percent to 20 percent. Steven Rales also founded the film production company Indian Paintbrush, which has financed several films by Wes Anderson.
The Rales brothers are not the first people with significant Maine connections who have ownership or high-profile executive positions in major league sports. They are not even the first who have summered in Hancock County.
Before the Rales purchased shares of professional sports teams, there was Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr., heir to the Widener fortune who was born in and summered in Winter Harbor.
Dixon, a philanthropist who supported Maine Coast hospital in Ellsworth and other area organizations, at various times was a minority owner of Philadelphia sports teams the Eagles, the Flyers and the Phillies.
But he is best remembered as the majority owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers when the team signed future Hall of Famer Julius Erving, also known as Dr. J.
Dixon owned the team for five years, selling it in 1981. He died in 2006.
Two Alfond siblings, Bill and Ted, also have ownership stakes in professional sports teams. The brothers, two of the four children of Dexter Shoe Co. founder Harold Alfond, grew up in Maine and now are minority partners in Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and English Premier League soccer team Liverpool Football Club. Bill Alfond lives in Belgrade, Maine, while Ted lives in suburban Boston.
Another Mainer with an ownership stake in a major league sports team is Gabe Plotkin, who grew up in Portland. A 1997 graduate of Deering High School, Ploktin and business partner Rick Schnall this summer bought a controlling interest in the Charlotte Hornets from NBA great Michael Jordan. Steve Clifford, an Island Falls native and University of Maine Farmington alum, is the team’s head coach.
Fellow NBA coach Gregg Popovich also has close ties to Maine. Popovich, the winningest coach in NBA history, is good friends with Ellsworth native Charlie Katsiaficas, the head coach at Pomona-Pitzer, a collegiate team in California that Popovich once coached. The San Antonio Spurs coach and president, who has led the team to five NBA titles, owns a summer home near Ellsworth at Hancock Point, overlooking Frenchman Bay.
Others who, like Popovich, have Maine ties and have long held high-profile executive positions in professional sports include Roger Goodell and Dana White.
Goodell, who has been the commissioner of the NFL since 2006, owns a summer home at Prout’s Neck in Scarborough.
White, who graduated from Hermon High School in 1987, is CEO and president of mixed martial arts organization Ultimate Fighting Championship, better known as UFC. White owns a summer home in Levant.