The obstacle Elon Musk would meet if he ever tried to buy into the NFL, NBA or MLB is not a bidding war. It is a vote no check can sign.

Former Miami Marlins president David Samson made that point on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast released on 4 November, arguing that the world’s richest man would fall at the first hurdle every major-league buyer has to pass: winning over a room full of existing owners.

“Frankly, I don’t think he’d get 23 votes to buy a team,” Samson told the podcast.

He added that Musk would not fit in among sports owners and would not settle for a single franchise anyway.

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“I don’t think he’d buy a team. I think he would just buy every team, just buy the league,” Samson said.

Where the number 23 comes from

Each of the four major American leagues makes an incoming owner pass a supermajority vote of the owners already inside. Major League Baseball has 30 clubs and requires 75 percent approval, which is where Samson’s 23-vote figure originates. The NFL applies the same 75 percent threshold across its 32 franchises, meaning 24 yes votes are needed, according to a June 2026 breakdown of league bylaws. The NBA and NHL use the same three-quarters bar.

The rule is as much political as financial. A buyer can out-bid every rival and still be blocked by the people already in the room, because they are not obliged to sell to him.

A bad week in politics

The podcast dropped in a week in which Musk’s standing in American politics took a visible hit. In the 5 November midterms, Democrat James Talarico won the Texas Senate seat by about 12 points over Ken Paxton, ending more than three decades of Republican control of statewide offices in Texas.

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Musk had poured around $212 million into Paxton’s campaign and roughly $474 million into Republican races across the cycle, according to ABC News. Democrats won all five Senate seats in which his America PAC had invested most heavily. Tesla shares fell almost 11 percent in the market reaction, and Forbes estimated Musk’s own net worth dropped by $80 billion.

Why Bezos and Rubin stayed out

Samson pointed out on the podcast that other figures with the resources to buy in, including Jeff Bezos and Michael Rubin, have chosen not to put themselves through the approval process. The logic he described was blunt: owning a team hands other owners a say in your life, which is a trade richer buyers often decide is not worth making.

Musk himself has not publicly bid for any US franchise.

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