John Fisher to sell San Jose Earthquakes, PayPal Park for $625M
· Yahoo Sports
Less than two weeks before the San Jose Earthquakes are scheduled to finally play their very first playoff match at PayPal Park, owner John Fisher is selling the team.
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On Friday, the Earthquakes announced that Heath Freeman, a media executive best known for being the co-founder and president of hedge fund Alden Global Capital, has agreed to purchase the team and its home stadium from Fisher and his partners. Major League Soccer's board has already approved the ownership change, the team said, and "the transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks."
Sportico was first to report about Fisher's sale to Freeman and reported the sale price was $625 million, a figure that an Earthquakes team official confirmed was accurate to SFGATE.
Fisher has been looking to sell the Earthquakes since June 2025. At the time, Fisher was in the beginning stages of building the A's ballpark in Las Vegas, and was seeking more finances to build the new stadium. The Las Vegas ballpark's construction has progressed steadily, but the estimated cost has ballooned from as low as $1.5 billion originally to north of $2 billion.
The reviled A's owner purchased the Quakes in 2007, getting a chance to revive the MLS franchise after the first iteration of the club ended when the franchise moved to Houston. Fisher privately financed the building of the stadium now known as PayPal Park, spending $100 million to build the stadium that opened in 2015.
Between the A's move to Las Vegas and the pending Earthquakes sale, it seems Fisher will now no longer be a sports owner in the region that his family has called home for his entire life.
Freeman is a graduate of Duke who played on the school's football team as a walk-on kicker. An avid sports fan, he's an owner of a Professional Bull Riders team, the executive chairman of the AVP beach volleyball league, and a major booster of his alma mater as well as the University of Miami's volleyball team.
Outside of the sports world, Freeman has become a vilified figure in the media world thanks to the moves of Alden. The hedge fund has become notorious for buying newspapers, slashing jobs and leaving skeleton crews to continue working while Alden takes home massive profits. This has even played out in the Bay Area, as one of Alden's newspaper companies, Digital First Media, has turned a number of regional newspapers - the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times and more - into a single company, the Bay Area News Group.
"Our vision is simple – winning on and off the field for San Jose and the entire region," Freeman said in a statement provided by the Earthquakes. "The Bay Area is home to some of the world's great institutions, sports franchises and leaders. The standard has been set. We are eager to partner with and connect our community more closely with the Earthquakes and immerse them in our world. We are committed to investing in the team and building a club that consistently competes for championships. Off the field, we are equally focused on strengthening our connections with fans and communities in San Jose and throughout the Bay Area. We believe the future of the Earthquakes is incredibly bright, and we can't wait to get started and take the Quakes to unforeseen heights."
The news comes after the Earthquakes' best season in years, with the club clinching the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference in the MLS Cup playoffs. The Quakes are scheduled to play their first-ever postseason match at their nearly 12-year-old stadium on Tuesday, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m.
This article originally published at John Fisher to sell San Jose Earthquakes, PayPal Park for $625M.