Detroit Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp.
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Detroit Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp is involved in a $1.63 Billion move that has nothing to do with the franchise.
Detroit Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp has helped get this team further than it’s gone in decades, and even though the Lions still haven’t made it to the big game, they at least got to the NFC championship game during the 2023-24 season. Now, Hamp has made a move that involves a $1.63 billion deal, and even though it has to do with sports, it doesn’t have to do with the Lions franchise.
The Detroit Lions had a difficult 2025-26 season, and it saw the team falling from first to last in the NFC North and not making the playoffs for the first time in three years. Hamp wrote a letter to the team’s season ticket holders following the season, stating that the team’s “results on the field this season were not what any of us envisioned and frankly, were not good enough.”
Elsewhere in the note, she added, “It is incumbent upon us to continue growing toward our ultimate goal of bringing a championship to all of you and the city of Detroit.”
Now, Hamp is dabbling in another sport outside of football. This sport is an incredibly popular one throughout the world, too.
Detroit Lions Owner Sheila Ford Hamp Purchases Stake in Another Sports Team
The sport of cricket may not be popular in the United States, but it’s played throughout the world. So, what is cricket? “Cricket is a bat-and-ball team sport where the batting side tries to score as many runs as possible while the bowling side attempts to get batters out, also known as taking wickets, and restrict the flow or runs,” the official Olympics website explains. “Cricket bats are constructed from high-grade willow with balls made of leather stitched onto a cork core.”
On Tuesday, March 24, Hamp was announced as part of a consortium that purchased the Rajasthan Royals, a cricket team in the Indian Premier League. The franchise sold for a reported $1.63 billion.
“Rajasthan Royals have entered a new era after being sold to a consortium led by US-based entrepreneur Kal Somani in a landmark $1.63 billion deal, making them the first IPL franchise to cross the billion-dollar mark,” MyKhel reports.
Along with Hamp, the team also incudes Kal Somani, a U.S. tech entrepreneur, and Rob Walton, the owner of the Denver Broncos and son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. These three businesspeople are also part of the ownership team for the Motor City Golf Club, a golf franchise that kicks off in 2027.
The Rajasthan Royals were founded 18 years ago in 2008. The team is based in Jaipur, India.
Sheila Ford Hamp Is a Proponent of ‘Sticking to the Plan’
Back in 2022, Hamp opened up about the Lions’ rough season, and these comments could apply to today, too. Speaking at the time with Lions in-house reporter Dannie Rogers, Hamp said that even though the team was having problems, she believed in her staff and leadership.
“Sticking to the plan is often hard,” she said. “You have the temptation to go, ‘Oh, let’s go out and get this player’ or ‘Let’s do that.'”
She added, “Well, that’s just not the way we want to build things. We want to build things with a solid foundation for the future so that we are consistently a terrific team.”