Trades between two professional sports franchises are a common occurrence. Swapping players or draft picks has happened for years.
But trading ownership of a professional sports team is more of a rarity.
In April, the Major League Pickleball franchises known as the D.C. Pickleball Team and the Brooklyn Aces announced their franchise name rights would be exchanged ahead of the new season, according to a press release.
In other words, the D.C. team is now owned by Brooklyn’s previous owner and vice versa.
The Aces were previously owned by Boardroom Sport Holdings’ Rich Kleiman and NBA player Kevin Durant, while the D.C. team was previously owned by a group that includes real estate investor Al Tylis and Sam Porter, who used to be an executive of the MLS franchise D.C. United.
Tylis and Porter’s group also includes NFL wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., former NBA stars Rip Hamilton and Shawn Marion, and MLB pitcher Justin Verlander.
The most recent time professional franchises swapped owners was in 1978, when the Boston Celtics and the then-Buffalo Braves completed a deal. American film producer Irv Levin became the owner of the Braves, while entrepreneur John Y. Brown and businessman Harry Mangurian took ownership of the Celtics.
The historical context didn’t come to mind for Kleiman as he went through the process. However, it’s an added element to what is seen as a beneficial move for the future of the league.
“When you say it, it does sound kind of cool to think about,” Kleiman told ESPN. “And I think the idea of it, when you own a team in an emerging league like this, it’s all very new as you’re doing it. … To be able to be making a move like that, it was fun. The idea of it was fun.”
Tylis, who grew up in Coney Island, New York, called Kleiman with the idea about two months ago.
“I wasn’t expecting that call, and I didn’t necessarily know how possible that was,” Kleiman said. “But as soon as I heard it, it instantly made sense to me and was something that I wanted to pursue.”
When Kleiman and Durant purchased the Brooklyn team in October 2022, Durant was still playing for the Nets. Kleiman, a New York native, loved having a connection to the city. However, Durant was born in Washington and established himself in the D.C. area through his foundation, Thirty-Five Ventures (35V), Kleiman said.
On the other hand, Tylis, new Brooklyn general manager Josh Gartman and chief operating officer Adam Behnke all live in Brooklyn. The group also has ties to the D.C. area: Porter, a member of the ownership group with Tylis, was an executive at D.C. United, while Behnke used to be an executive himself at the club. Tylis was a part owner of the club at one point, too, he said. It led to their decision to own the franchise.
The ownership group leaned into the D.C. team and league, doing more events in the D.C. area.
“Every time we would be doing events in the Washington, D.C., area, we would say, jeez this is great, we’re getting so much fan engagement, so much interest in the community,” Tylis told ESPN. “But how much more can we even do if it was in our backyard?
“When you’re trying to build from the ground up in a grassroots way, feels like there’s no substitute to being physically in market for the vast majority of the year as opposed to traveling to market and eventually coming back.”
Tylis then thought of Kleiman and Durant before making the call to the then-Brooklyn owner with a unique trade proposal to swap cities.
Kleiman had experience in the D.C. area — he once managed rapper Wale, a Washington native — but Durant’s already-large presence in the area was the top reason the trade was attractive to Kleiman.
The first person he called to discuss the trade was Durant. Kleiman has managed the two-time NBA champion since 2012 and the two are business partners with 35V. Kleiman said Durant flashed a big smile on FaceTime and said: “Yes, let’s do this in D.C.”
“I love the entire DMV area and I’ve got so comfortable over my career working there,” Kleiman said. “I know the area very well. But, of course Kevin’s affinity for his hometown, his mom and dad being there, running his organization and the amount of work that we do and continue to do in the community. It was like a no-brainer once that was presented to me.”
Kleiman then called his other partners and started speaking to their investors and sponsors about the trade.
He said it was “a little bit of a process” to get things in motion, but everybody was on board. Kleiman and Tylis regularly play pickleball together, which they credit for contributing to their heightened sense of trust in one another.
They brought up the proposal to the league and had to get approval from the board of directors of the United Pickleball Association, the holding company for Major League Pickleball and the Professional Pickleball Association.
“I think everybody quickly realized, as I was sort of saying at the outset,” Tylis said, “this is a win for Kevin, Rich and their crew. It’s a win for us, and it’s a win for the league.”
MLP launched in September 2021. Making a move like this — with the league in its early stages — could help the league grow.
Tylis likened it to a baseball game with the league in only the top of the second inning, allowing it to be flexible and have creativity. The swap is a move he and Kleiman believe is beneficial for MLP’s future.
“We’re taking [an] extended view of this,” Tylis said. “And over the rest of the nine-inning game, us being able to grow our fan base in New York, in Brooklyn in particular, is going to be far greater for the rest of this than it would be if we were in D.C. And I think the same is true for the now D.C. team.”
It’s still early for either ownership group to have any concrete plans for its new franchise. However, the move opens the door for a larger vision Tylis has: home courts.
Currently, MLP is holding events in six different cities, rather than adhering to a traditional home and away schedule. Tylis believes it’s only a matter of time before that changes.
“I do believe that at the pace we’re growing and the interest in the sport and the growth in it that we’re going to get to a point where we all do have home facilities and courts,” Tylis said. “And that’s an incremental reason why being able to do something in your backyard where we could someday build our own stadium that houses the Brooklyn pickleball team but also does other events pickleball related or otherwise in the community.”
With a real estate background, Tylis is in prime position to do exactly that. And Kleiman is excited about introducing the sport to a new demographic and the communities that Durant grew up in and continues to serve through his foundation.
