On Monday, Sixth Street announced it would pay $600 million for a 27% stake in Pinnacle Gas Services, a deal that values the energy company at $2.2 billion.
While the transaction does not involve sports directly, there is a sports connection: Pinnacle Gas Services is a subsidiary of Comstock Resources, the publicly traded natural gas driller controlled by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
The deal highlights the various ways large institutional firms such as Sixth Street are approaching their growing interest in servicing sports teams and their billionaire owners. This is not the first touchpoint between Sixth Street and the owner of the world’s most valuable sports team; Sixth Street is the majority owner of Legends, the sports consultancy co-founded by the Jones family more than a decade ago.
The Pinnacle deal comes as Sixth Street and many of its largest rivals dive deeper and deeper into sports ownership. In addition to the 2021 Legends acquisition, Sixth Street has invested in the San Antonio Spurs, Boston Celtics, San Francisco Giants and New England Patriots, and it purchased an NWSL expansion team, Bay FC, all in the last six years. It’s also invested in commercial ventures tied to Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Those transactions have opened Sixth Street’s funds to a new sector, one generally insulated from volatility that often impacts other parts of the global economy. And they work as a two-way street. Sometimes a sports deal opens the door to work with an ownership group’s broader portfolio; other times, work with a non-sports portfolio provides an entry point to future to sports M&A.
Sixth Street’s path to investing in the Boston Celtics is an example of the latter. The firm came to the deal via an existing relationship with new owner William Chisholm, whose private equity firm Symphony Technology Group has been a Sixth Street partner for years. Sixth Street ultimately contributed $1 billion to Chisholm’s $6.1 billion acquisition, among the largest single contributions of institutional money ever into a major U.S. sports franchise.
The NFL recently changed its ownership rules to allow owners to source money from a handful of specific private equity partners, including Sixth Street. While Sportico has heard nothing about the Cowboys seeking institutional money—and a team rep said it wasn’t currently under consideration—the team would likely draw a lot of interest if it ever did. The Cowboys are worth $12.8 billion, according to Sportico’s most recent NFL valuations, with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors ($11.33 billion) as the next closest global sports team.
The Jones family, still a Legends investor, has other ties to Sixth Street as well. Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son and the Cowboys’ COO, spoke recently at a Sixth Street executive conference. In a 2024 SBJ story he publicly praised the private equity firm, saying he and his father were “blown away” by their level of detail in the Legends transaction.
A rep for Sixth Street declined to comment.
Of course, there’s plenty of opportunity in gas as well, making the Pinnacle investment potentially worthwhile even if the broader Jones/Sixth Street relationship never expands to the Cowboys. Jones told Forbes four years ago that the long-term growth of his natural gas holdings, worth a combined $4.3 billion at the time, would likely outpace that of the Cowboys.
“The greatest wealth is in the gas,” he said. “It’s much bigger than the Cowboys.”