The Billion Dollar Man Nobody Knew

When the Boston Celtics sold for $6.1 billion in 2025 — an NBA record at the time — nobody knew the buyer. Fans, reporters, even people inside the NBA were googling “who is Bill Chisholm?” Turns out he was just a die-hard Celtics fan from Massachusetts, growing up with no family fortune waiting for him. His first job was a corporate consultant, learning to spot what was broken in struggling companies. In 2002, he bet on himself and started his own firm, buying up software companies nobody else wanted, fixing them, and flipping them for profit — always keeping 20% of the win. Deals like RSA Security ($2B) and McAfee’s corporate business ($4B) followed, and today his firm manages over $10 billion. Twenty years later, that kid from Massachusetts was worth over $3 billion — enough to run the exact same playbook on the team he grew up rooting for. But here’s the catch: that playbook — buy it, squeeze margins, sell for more — is the same private equity model that’s reshaped brands people love. Jimmy John’s is a go-to example: after a PE-style buyout, longtime customers say portions shrank as costs got trimmed to protect profit. When that mindset moves from sandwiches to sports franchises, it raises a real question — does “fix it and flip it” mean ticket prices climb and fan experience gets squeezed too, all to hit investor targets?

Celtics