ORLANDO, Fla. _ Orlando Apollos Head Ball Coach Steve Spurrier shed some new light on why Tom Dundon, the owner of the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes supplied the Alliance of American Football with what appears to have been a $250 million, league-saving lifeline earlier this week.
Spurrier, making his weekly appearance on my Open Mike radio show on FM 96.9 and AM 740, hinted Wednesday that an initial investor backed out and put the league's working capital in jeopardy. This apparently is what led to league co-founder and CEO Charlie Ebersol to identify Dundon as the league's financial savior.
"I think what happened is an original investor sort of led us (Ebersol and the Alliance) into believing he could come up with the money to get us through the first year, and then he sort of bailed out," Spurrier said. "He didn't have (the money), and we found Tom Dundon. I think (Dundon) liked the idea so much, he became the majority owner (of the league) and now we're all set to go for quite a while.
"We really appreciate Tom Dundon for stepping forward. He believes in the Alliance and now the future looks very good."
Ebersol, in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday, did not get into the inner workings of the deal with Dundon, who was named the league's Chairman of the Board on Monday when he became the Alliance's biggest individual stakeholder. Dundon's massive investment, Ebersol said, was a chance to solve the league's money issues with one stroke of the pen.
"After that first week of games, we were at the height of our valuation and were able to dictate our future," Ebersol said when asked by the Sentinel if the league was in a financial bind before Dundon bought in. "We are a start-up, and start-ups usually raise money in pieces _ there's a Series A piece, Series B, Series C, etc. After the success of the first week, we had a number of investors come to us and offer us all kinds of different investments. Tom Dundon showed up and said, 'Do you want to continue to raise Series B, Series C and Series D or do you want to raise Series Infinity right now and be taken care of from now on.' That was an offer I was not going to refuse."
