Super Bowl Champ Logan Ryan Almost Bought Into a French Soccer Team

The same competitive fire that enabled former NFL cornerback Logan Ryan to lead the New England Patriots in interceptions as a rookie has driven him toward post-football success as a CBS NFL analyst and tech investor. 

And he says his penchant for preparation helped him avoid a potentially costly European soccer investment.

Ryan, a two-time Super Bowl champion who led the Patriots (and all rookies) with five interceptions in his debut NFL season in 2013, retired just last year, but has already established himself in the investment world. He’s particularly interested in international soccer, which has attracted an army of big-name investors in recent years, from Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney with Wrexham AFC to Eva Longoria in Club Necaxa to Michael B. Jordan with AFC Bournemouth and JJ Watt with Burnley FC.

Ryan was in talks to buy into Toulouse FC, a French soccer team that plays in Ligue 1, and says he got close to signing a deal before the league’s media rights deal “came in much lower than the clubs anticipated.” Part of the reason for that was global soccer star Kylian Mbappé leaving Paris Saint-Germain, which plays in Ligue 1, to join Real Madrid, which plays in Spain’s LaLiga. Ligue 1 had no broadcast deal heading into the 2024-2025 season, then landed on streamer DAZN, but DAZN sought to renegotiate its deal lower halfway through the season.

The majority owner of Toulouse, RedBird Capital Partners, has reportedly been looking to sell the club since late 2023. L’Équipe, a French publication focused on sports, reported this week that RedBird has held talks with Dubai-based World Gate Investments about a potential deal for Toulouse. (RedBird IMI is the majority investor in Front Office Sports.)

“With that TV deal not coming, the investment didn’t make sense for me now,” Ryan told Front Office Sports in the latest episode of Portfolio Players. “I’m currently looking at teams in Mexico, Spain. Perhaps buying a small percentage of multiple teams, being part of groups like that.”

Even though it didn’t happen, the whole story is perfectly representative of the current trend in sports ownership: every athlete wants a stake in a sports team. Ryan is no exception. 

“It’s just the sexiest thing to do,” he says. “For the most part, we know NFL, NBA, those franchises are not going to go down. Those assets are only going to skyrocket. You see the sale of the Celtics was huge. So what are the Patriots worth? What are the Cowboys worth? They’re probably over $10 billion. So if you can get a piece of that… I think everybody wants to do that, why not, I’m trying to do that.”

He doesn’t only invest in sports. Ryan’s portfolio includes personal properties, commercial real estate, and tech investments, including ChatGPT maker OpenAI. He also does private credit investing—deals where he loans capital directly to companies in exchange for interest payments, often earning higher returns than traditional investments due to the risk and structure of the loans.

Former athletes may have the capital, and connections, to buy into pro sports franchises, but Ryan has learned lessons that anyone with an interest in finance should consider. Right now, in addition to looking at sports investments, he’s eyeing areas like artificial intelligence and crypto, including the underlying technology that supports cryptocurrencies. 

He says he leans on advisors, and is willing to make a change if he finds an existing advisor isn’t quite cutting it. He also says it’s important to have a balance in your portfolio between liquid and non-liquid investments, and that for him, the majority of his holdings will always be liquid. Liquid investment, like stocks, can be quickly converted into cash, while non-liquid investments, like equity stakes or commercial real estate, take longer to sell in order to access the cash.

Ultimately, it’s all about planning for the future and setting up his family with “generational wealth.”

“It doesn’t matter how much you make, it only matters how much you save,” he says.