So, I’ve been a die-hard Warriors fan for ages. Chasing championships, the whole nine yards. And lately, I got this bug, you know? Thinking, ‘Man, with all this success, can I actually get a piece of the action? Like, buy Golden State Warriors stocks?’ Seemed like a no-brainer, right? Invest in the team you bleed gold and blue for.
First thing I did, jumped on my laptop. Started Googling like crazy. ‘Warriors stock ticker,’ ‘how to buy GSW shares,’ ‘invest in Golden State Warriors.’ You name it, I typed it. Figured it’d be like buying Apple or Tesla stock. Easy peasy.
Well, let me tell you, it wasn’t. Not even close. Kept running into walls. Info was scarce, or just plain confusing. It quickly dawned on me that these big sports teams, especially the major league ones here in the States, they don’t just pop up on the stock market for any Joe Schmo to buy into.
The Real Deal with Team Ownership
Had to dig deeper. Spent a good chunk of time reading articles, trying to understand how it all works. And here’s the kicker: the Golden State Warriors are privately owned. We’re talking about a small group of super-rich folks, investment groups, people like Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. They own the team. Not thousands of little shareholders like you and me.
So, that dream of logging into my brokerage account and buying a few shares of GSW? Poof. Gone. You can’t just call up your broker and say, ‘Gimme a hundred shares of the Warriors!’ They’d probably laugh you off the phone.
I even thought, ‘Okay, maybe there’s another way? What about companies that sponsor them heavily? Or maybe some parent company that owns them and IS public?’ Went down that rabbit hole too. Found some big names associated with them, sure, but investing in, say, Rakuten or Kaiser Permanente isn’t owning a piece of the Warriors. It’s just… not the same thing. Not even close.
Then there’s all this talk about fan tokens and digital collectibles. Saw some of that stuff floating around. But honestly, that feels more like buying a fancy trading card than actual ownership. It’s a different beast altogether, and not what I was looking for when I thought ‘stocks’.
So, Why Am I Telling You All This?
You might be wondering why I bothered to go through all this trouble, right? Well, it wasn’t just idle curiosity. My nephew, he’s young, super into basketball, and he just got his first paycheck from a summer job. He came to me, all excited, ‘Uncle, I want to invest my money in the Warriors! How do I do it?’ He was so earnest, bless his heart.
I didn’t want to just shut him down. I remembered being his age, thinking I could conquer the world, or at least buy into my favorite things. So, I told him, ‘Let’s look into it together.’ We spent a whole weekend, basically doing what I just described. We looked at articles, tried to find stock symbols, the whole shebang. He got to see firsthand why it’s not possible, at least not in the way he imagined.
It was a bit of a letdown for him, sure, but also a good lesson, I think. About how ownership works, about private vs. public companies. He was bummed he couldn’t own ‘Warriors stock,’ but then he decided to buy a really nice jersey with his money instead. Said it was his ‘fan share’. Kinda liked that.
So yeah, that’s my little adventure trying to chase down ‘Golden State Warriors stocks.’ No pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, just a bit more wisdom, I guess. And a story to tell. Sometimes, the real ‘investment’ is just being a fan, showing up, and cheering them on. That’s my two cents, anyway.
