Jeffrey Lurie mortgaged his family fortune to buy a struggling team in 1994. Now, Philadelphia is one of the NFL’s most valuable franchises and a two-time Super Bowl champion.
By Justin Birnbaum, Forbes Staff
Jeffrey Lurie has produced three Oscar-winning documentaries, yet even he couldn’t have scripted a better ending for his Philadelphia Eagles, who crushed the Kansas City Chiefs, 40-22, in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday night.
“This is a very, very special Eagles family,” the 73-year-old said as he raised his second Lombardi Trophy in front of a ravenous crowd inside New Orleans’ Superdome, before heading into the locker room and unleashing some charmingly clumsy dance moves during the raucous celebration. “Incredible, talented players that happen to be unselfish and humble every single day of the year. A credit to the coaching staff led by Nick [Sirianni]. [General manager] Howie [Roseman] and his staff, unbelievable. And by the way, about 200 other people that are the support staff you never hear about, and a few dogs, too.
“And to our amazing fans, the Eagles are world champions again.”
For Philadelphia, it’s the culmination of a redemptive arc that began two years ago, after the team lost Super Bowl LVII to the Chiefs in heartbreaking fashion. The Eagles’ revenge—with a dominant, six-sack display from their defensive line and an MVP performance from quarterback Jalen Hurts—denied Kansas City the chance to become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls.
Lurie, whose net worth now stands at an estimated $5.3 billion, has been piling up wins off the field as well. The Eagles are worth $6.6 billion, according to Forbes estimates, making them the eighth-most-valuable team in the NFL and the 12th-most in any sport. Since Lurie bought Philadelphia for $185 million in 1994, he has seen appreciation of 3,500%—and his return could be even better than that, after the sale of an 8% stake in December at a reported $8.3 billion valuation (although the prices for small pieces of teams do not necessarily equate to the values in control sales).
But while the NFL’s cash-generating machine, with an annual average of $12.4 billion in national media rights payments, should keep driving those numbers higher, the Eagles were hardly a sure thing when Lurie gambled his family’s fortune to buy the team.
That wealth traces back to the General Cinema Corporation, which was founded in 1935 by Lurie’s grandfather, Philip Smith, and, over the following decade, owned nine of the 15 drive-in theaters in the U.S. In the 1990s, the company controlled 315 movie theater complexes plus 60% of the Neiman Marcus retail chain, and it diversified further by acquiring Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, a struggling book publisher and insurance company, in a $1.4 billion deal. (The business was rebranded as Harcourt General.)
At first, Lurie charted his own path, studying at Clark, Boston and Brandeis Universities and working as adjunct professor of social policy. He joined the family business in 1983 but left two years later to create his own film and television production company, the Los Angeles-based Chestnut Hill Productions.
It took Lurie decades to achieve Hollywood success, with three Academy Award-winning documentaries as a producer: Inside Job, on the 2008 financial crisis; Inocente, about an undocumented homeless American teenager; and Summer of Soul, chronicling the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. In the meantime, Lurie shifted his focus to another passion: professional football.
He became obsessed with the sport after watching Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the legendary 1958 NFL championship game, and the Massachusetts native became a season-ticket holder of the Boston (later New England) Patriots. The team came up for sale in 1993, but Lurie dropped out of the running when the price surpassed $150 million.
Robert Kraft ended up spending $172 million on the franchise, although Lurie didn’t have to wait long for another opportunity. After failing to bring an expansion team to Baltimore—the NFL chose to grant teams to Carolina and Jacksonville—Lurie acquired the Eagles from Miami-based luxury car dealer Norman Braman, who is worth an estimated $3.6 billion today but had been battling an illness and wanted out of the sports business.
At the time, the $185 million Lurie paid was believed to be the highest price ever for a professional sports franchise, and financing the deal proved to be a herculean task. Lurie and his mother, Nancy, borrowed a nine-figure loan from the Bank of Boston, using their Harcourt General stock as equity and pledging more from the family trust as collateral. In 1995, Lurie also added two limited partners, Richard Green of Firstrust Bank and longtime KKR executive Mike Michelson.
Lurie moved quickly in those early years. Within a decade, the Eagles had a new, $37 million practice facility and had moved out of rat-infested Veterans Stadium and into the $512 million Lincoln Financial Field, with the help of almost $200 million in public money.
“When Jeff bought the team, a large part of the money came from other family members—it wasn’t just that he started Microsoft and bought a football team,” says Marc Ganis, president of the consulting firm Sportscorp, who is often called the NFL’s “33rd owner” because of his close ties to football’s decision makers. “And that’s why one of the first things that Jeff went about doing was getting a new stadium—not building a Taj Mahal edifice to himself, but building one that was right for the Eagles fans that would also generate a lot of revenue.”
Lurie also has the admiration of his opponent on Sunday, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who told Forbes last week: “I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the finance committee with him for at least a decade, and I think he’s one of the smartest owners in the league. I always enjoy hearing his perspective. Sometimes it is a thought that the group hasn’t had. I describe it as an out-of-the-box thought that’s really good and really worth digging into.”
Lurie has applied that maverick mentality to team personnel, dumping coach Andy Reid, the franchise’s career wins leader, in 2012 and splitting with coach Doug Pederson and franchise quarterback Carson Wentz even after they helped produce the Eagles’ first Super Bowl championship during the 2017 season. He has also made a big bet on international expansion, with the Eagles playing the first-ever NFL game in South America in São Paolo, Brazil, this season and picking up marketing rights in Australia, where the league will play its first game in 2026.
“One of the real lessons always is, don’t try to be popular,” Lurie said days before the Super Bowl. “Never try to make the popular choices; do what you think is right. Sometimes it’s going to work; sometimes it’s not.”
On Sunday, at least, it couldn’t have worked any better.
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