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If the late Art Rooney Sr. wasn’t a gambler with a sense of fair play, perhaps the Pittsburgh Steelers would have never come to be a franchise that may be worth up to $1.2 billion today.
Rooney, in a tale that will forever be part of both NFL and horse-racing lore, won so much money at Saratoga Race Course in the summer of 1936 that he had to hire a Brinks truck to carry it all home. Pro football historians embrace the story because it speaks to the hardscrabble beginnings of the league, and horse racing enthusiasts can’t ever forget it, because who doesn’t dream about needing a long line of wheelbarrows and a police escort after a day at the track?
According to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story published upon Rooney’s passing in 1988, Rooney is believed to have won anywhere between $200,000 to $358,000 in Depression-era dollars during his winning streak for the ages.
Rooney’s magical run started at Empire City Race Track in Yonkers, N.Y. According to the Post-Gazette, Rooney, in town for a plumbers’ union dinner and accompanied by two friends, began with $20 and turned that into $700. In those days, you could wager with bookmakers on-track, and one of the Empire City bookies was, unfortunately, on his way to becoming a cautionary tale for his brethren.
But in a noble gesture, Rooney gave the bookmaker, harried about his losses, a fair shot at making some money back. Rooney didn’t sit on his winnings; he kept firing.
“I felt sorry for the guy because it really clubbed him right off,” Rooney told the Post-Gazette years later, “so I went back to him to give him a chance to get even and I let the whole thing go. Well, I had three or four winners and ended up breaking the guy.”
Then it was off to Saratoga for Rooney and his buddies, who hopefully were getting in on the action themselves. After winning more than $20,000 at Empire City, Rooney no doubt was betting with confidence on the famed race meeting’s opening day.
According to the Post-Gazette’s account of events more than 50 years later, Rooney liked an 8-1 shot early in the card. That wager cashed, as did just about every other one he made that afternoon.
“I came close to sweeping the card,” Rooney told the Post-Gazette. “It was the best day I’ve ever had.”
It’s widely acknowledged that Rooney used those gobs of money to keep Pittsburgh’s NFL team, founded just a few years earlier, solvent. Along the way, the Rooney family got into the racing business, too. The Rooneys later purchased the Empire City track; it's now called the Empire City at Yonkers Raceway, and harness racing and video lottery terminals are the draws. The family also owns the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a greyhound-racing track and poker room in West Palm Beach, Fla.
But the days of the Rooneys having ownership stakes in both businesses are nearing an end. The Steelers announced earlier this week that Dan Rooney, son of the team’s founder, is working with his son, Art Rooney II, to buy out shares of the team held by his four brothers: Art Jr., Timothy, Patrick and John. Timothy, Patrick and John Rooney reportedly would prefer to keep their equity in the family’s gaming businesses.
Several issues are in play. At present, it is believed no one person owns more than 16 percent of the club, and the NFL requires at least one owner to take a 30 percent interest or greater in a team. Also, the NFL forbids owners from investing in gambling-related businesses.
There is also the issue of how to value the Rooney’s ownership shares. According to the Wall Street Journal, family members concerned about how Dan Rooney had priced the shares in his original buyout proposal to his brothers asked Goldman Sachs to undertake their own estimate of the team’s market value. According to the investment bank’s analysis, the Steelers are worth between $800 million to $1.2 billion. The team was valued at $929 million by Forbes in 2007.
To facilitate a sale, Dan Rooney may have to look to take on a partner, and speculation has Stanley Druckenmiller, chairman of Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Capital Management, as a likely candidate.
According to Forbes, Druckenmiller is the 91st wealthiest person in America, with a net worth of $3.5 billion. Druckenmiller amassed his billions running a hedge fund; Art Rooney made hundreds of thousands of dollars when betting to win, place and show were the only options at the race track. And if he were just content to stop when he was up a few hundred bucks on that summer afternoon at Empire City, who knows how the fate of the Steelers’ franchise would have been altered?
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