Fenway Sports Group closed the sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Hoffmann family for a price between $1.7 billion and $1.8 billion, according to people familiar with the transaction. The deal marks FSG's complete withdrawal from hockey after acquiring majority control in November 2021 for roughly $900 million. Exit multiple: clean double in thirty-six months.
The Hoffmann family, which controls the Chicago-based commercial insurance brokerage AssuredPartners, beat out at least two other final-round bidders. AssuredPartners generated $4.1 billion in revenue in 2024 and employs over 16,000 people across the United States and United Kingdom. Jim Hoffmann, the family patriarch, did not participate in the bidding process for the Chicago Blackhawks when that franchise last changed hands—making Pittsburgh his first NHL asset. The family's prior sports holdings include minority stakes in MLS properties, none controlling.
FSG's thesis on the Penguins rested on two pillars: real estate monetization around PPG Paints Arena and North American sponsorship arbitrage using Liverpool FC's global brand. Neither delivered at velocity. The arena district saw modest development activity, but zoning entanglements and municipal budget constraints slowed timelines. Cross-portfolio sponsor deals materialized in financial services and automotive categories, but total incremental revenue remained under $15 million annually, per two people briefed on FSG's internal reviews. Meanwhile, FSG's baseball and soccer assets—Boston Red Sox, Liverpool FC, and a controlling stake in the Pittsburgh Pirates' regional sports network—demanded capital and executive attention. The Penguins became the portfolio's smallest revenue generator at roughly $280 million in hockey-related revenue for the 2023-24 season, trailing the Red Sox ($640 million) and Liverpool ($780 million equivalent). When the Hoffmann offer arrived in November 2024, FSG's investment committee approved the sale in one meeting.
The Penguins enter new ownership at an inflection point. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang are all north of 36 years old. The team has missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time since 2005-06. Attendance at PPG Paints Arena averaged 17,483 through January, down 4.2% year-over-year. Local television ratings on SportsNet Pittsburgh fell 11% in the same window. The Hoffmann family inherits a franchise with $440 million in remaining debt service on arena renovations and a head coach, Mike Sullivan, entering the final year of his contract at $4.4 million. Sullivan's agent, Rick Curran, has fielded inquiries from two other NHL clubs since December, per a person familiar with the conversations. The Penguins' front office, led by president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas, has begun preliminary discussions on a Crosby contract extension that would take him past age 40. Crosby's current deal expires after the 2024-25 season at $8.7 million annually. Dubas has no guaranteed contract past June 2026.
FSG's ownership generated one notable personnel legacy: the hire of Dubas from Toronto in June 2023. Dubas rebuilt the Maple Leafs' analytics infrastructure and expanded their salary-cap modeling. He brought both to Pittsburgh. The Penguins now employ 12 full-time analysts, up from 4 under prior ownership. The front office uses a proprietary expected-goals model built in collaboration with a Boston-based data consultancy that also works with the Red Sox. That infrastructure remains under Hoffmann ownership, though Dubas has not yet met the family in person. His first scheduled meeting is set for late February in Chicago.
FSG retains no stake in the Penguins post-closing. The firm now holds majority control in four entities: the Red Sox, Liverpool FC, the New England Sports Network, and a 15% stake in Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing in NASCAR. FSG managing partner Sam Kennedy declined to comment on whether the firm would pursue another NHL property. The Hoffmann family has committed to keeping the Penguins in Pittsburgh and maintaining current front-office leadership through the end of the 2024-25 season. After that, Jim Hoffmann's son, Michael, is expected to assume an active governance role. Michael Hoffmann, 42, currently serves as AssuredPartners' chief strategy officer and has attended 8 Penguins home games since early December, sitting in FSG's former suite behind the penalty box.
The NHL's Board of Governors will vote on the sale at its March meeting in Palm Beach. Approval requires three-quarters support. No governor has signaled opposition. The transaction attorney is Proskauer Rose, same firm that handled FSG's purchase of Liverpool in 2010.
The takeaway
FSG doubles its money in three years and exits hockey; Hoffmann family inherits aging core, front-office uncertainty, and **$440 million** in arena debt.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.