Don’t come within five feet of me during a match,” Swansea City’s co-owner Steve Kaplan warns me. “And if we lose, which unfortunately has occurred so far this season quite a bit, it ruins my entire weekend. I’m not a pleasant person to be around.”
Long-suffering football fans will relate. But a few years ago, the softly spoken American, 59, barely watched the game, let alone allowed his mood to be dictated by it. Baseball was Kaplan’s childhood passion. His desire to play at college was cut short when he injured a shoulder by running into another player with enough force to leave the opponent unconscious. Instead, he went into business, founded a private equity firm and amassed a multimillion dollar fortune.
Kaplan never lost the sporting bug though and, in 2012, bought a stake in the Memphis Grizzlies, an NBA basketball team. It was from this vantage point that he first observed the global popularity of a rival sport — football and, in particular, the English Premier League.
