The Next Mogul?
Even with its booming popularity, the AFL remains an uncertain investment. Casey Wasserman’s experience is a case in point. The grandson of the late Lew Wasserman, overlord of MCA studios and the man famously dubbed “The Last Mogul” by author Dennis McDougal, Casey paid about $5 million for the franchise rights to the Los Angeles Avengers in 1998. He admits that he has yet to make a profit on the team.

Wasserman graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in political science and, at 24, became the youngest person to ever own a professional sports franchise. He sees the experience as the world’s most expensive grad school education. “I was more passionate about sports than anything else, and I wanted something where I could get in and roll up my sleeves, make mistakes and have success,” he says. “I wanted something that involved me building it, not something that was already well oiled.”

Wasserman has certainly paid for plenty of oil. He confesses that he was prepared to lose money on the Avengers. “We lose money, but the losses have been reduced dramatically each year,” he says. “But we are not prepared to sacrifice our image either on the field or off it to save a few hundred thousand dollars. We are not going to become the [Tampa Bay] Devil Rays, who won the World Series and dumped their players.”