Q&A of the Day – Who is Lin Bin? About The New Miami Dolphins Minority Owner
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: Hey Brian and Joel, this is Rob from West Palm. You guys are doing a great job. I listen every morning. Hey, could you explain a little bit more about the Chinese connection and Stephen Ross selling a portion of the Miami Dolphins to a Chinese businessman? Not only was the NFL already losing me with last year's selection for a Super Bowl halftime show, but they almost got me gone.
Bottom Line: The Miami Dolphins' new 1% minority owner is Lin Bin. He’s a Chinese-American billionaire tech entrepreneur who studied in the United States and rose through the corporate ranks stateside before returning to China to cofound the country’s largest smartphone company Xiaomi, which is the third largest smartphone company in the world behind Apple and Samsung. Bin’s estimated net worth stands at $10-$12 billion.
Notably, Xiaomi is headquartered in Beijing and Lin currently serves as the company’s vice chairman making Beijing his full-time residence. For those skeptical of Bin’s stake in the Miami Dolphins (in addition to multiple high-profile real-estate assets including Hard Rock Stadium), his heritage and current role with Xiaomi play into those concerns. Especially considering Xiaomi’s business operations, ties to the Chinese communist government and this (not-so) little factoid...
In January 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense under the first Trump administration added Xiaomi to its list of "Communist Chinese Military Companies", accusing it of links to China's military. The Biden administration later lifted that designation. Regardless of one’s view of Lin Bin, or Xiaomi’s intentions, within China’s communistic society, which includes a “social credit system”, all aspects of their economy and consumer technology are highly managed, regulated and surveilled by the government. It’s widely believed that only those who advance the government’s goals are allowed to proliferate technology and accumulate wealth. With that in mind here’s what we know about Lin Bin’s background:
- He graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in China in 1990 with a bachelor's degree.
- He then came to the U.S. for graduate studies, earning a master's degree from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1992.
- His professional career in the U.S. began shortly after: software engineer at ADP, then engineering roles at Microsoft (1995–2006), Google (2006–2010), before co-founding Xiaomi in Beijing in 2010.
Lin Bin is paying $125 million for the 1% stake in the Dolphins and various real-estate interests. It's obviously not a controlling stake, or even close to it—Steven Ross remains the principal owner—but it set a new benchmark for NFL franchise valuations. The implied valuation for the Dolphins is $12.5 billion with the rate paid by Bin.
It’s not totally a done deal just yet. The NFL's finance committee has approved the purchase, which is no surprise and the NFL is interested in expanding its presence internationally, including in China. The final step is approval by at least 24 NFL owners at a March 29th owners meeting. Given the implication for rising NFL franchise valuations if Bin’s deal goes through, independent of other factors, it’s likely enough owners sign off on the purchase for it to go through.
South Florida has history in recent years with Chinese spies (from Naval Air Station Key West to Mar a Lago). On that note, the conspiratorial concerns about a Chinese entrepreneur of a company previously listed as a company of concern for the U.S. government due to its alleged CPB/military ties owning a stake in the Dolphins and related real-estate assets...is interesting. I’ve reported you can decide if you think there’s more to the story.