The founder and CEO of Amazon said in February that he would step down before the end of 2021, and his departure date was finally announced Wednesday.
Jeff Bezos will give his title to Andy Jassy on July 5, exactly 27 years after Amazon was incorporated.
Bezos, with a net worth of $188.2 billion, is usually the world’s richest person. (Bernard Arnault, majority owner of LVMH, briefly took the spot this week.) Amazon and Bezos’ personal investment in sports has picked up in recent months.
- March: Secured rights to 21 Yankees games this season and an 11-year package to exclusively stream NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” for around $1 billion each year.
- April: Bezos participated in an $80 million Series C funding round for Overtime, which has a basketball league that will pay 16-18-year-olds over $100,000 per year.
- May: Secured exclusive streaming rights to 16 WNBA games per season in addition to the Commissioner’s Cup.
On the same day as the Bezos announcement, Amazon revealed its purchase of MGM Studios for $8.45 billion, a mere fraction of the company’s $386 billion in 2020 revenue.
Bezos will remain on the Amazon board and may invest further in sports in the near future. He’s reportedly interested in buying an NFL team, with the Washington Football Team listed as a frontrunner. He has enough money to buy every team in the league.
