Who is Frank McCourt, the billionaire aiming to acquire TikTok?

Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Frank McCourt —best known as the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers—has placed a bid to buy TikTok through a group he started called Project Liberty, which is advocating that user data be owned by users rather than by tech giants like TikTok parent ByteDance, Meta and Alphabet. Project Liberty announced in May 2024 that it was organizing a bid. Then on Thursday, January 9 it said that it had made an official offer, dubbed the People’s Bid for TikTok.

McCourt and Project Liberty made the offer in partnership with investment bank Guggenheim Securities, law firm Kirkland & Ellis and a consortium of investors—including Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and several of the leading technologists already participating in the Project Liberty initiative. The dollar amount of the offer wasn’t disclosed, but Project Liberty’s plan would also require debt financing from “one of the largest banks in the United States.”

McCourt has a track record of heavy criticism of tech giants, especially of Chinese-owned TikTok. “We have to break the model or evolve the model into one where it returns the control, the agency, the choice, the ownership and the rights to individuals,” McCourt, who is 70, told Forbes in November 2023. “It's either really Chinese tech or American. Those are your choices.”

McCourt’s consortium claimed to have more than $20 billion in commitments from its investors, per a December press release. That figure is what McCourt thinks TikTok is worth, he told the New York Times on January 10, and is on the lower end of estimated valuations from analysts and executives. (TikTok likely generates less than 15% of the estimated $120 billion annual revenue at ByteDance, a company that Forbes values at more than $230 billion.)

ByteDance has yet to make a public statement regarding the offer and has not indicated any plans to sell TikTok's operations in the United States, nor clarified what would be included in such a sale. However, during oral arguments on January 10, the Supreme Court appeared inclined to support the federal law prohibiting TikTok unless it separates from ByteDance.

“In a press release from January, McCourt stated, ‘Maintaining the platform without depending on the existing TikTok algorithm and steering clear of a ban will allow millions of Americans to keep enjoying it.’ He added, ‘We are eager to collaborate with ByteDance, President-elect Trump, and the new administration to finalize this agreement.’”

A fter selling the Los Angeles Dodgers, McCourt spent most of the past decade focused on investing the approximately $850 million in proceeds from the team’s 2012 sale via his company McCourt Global. He sprinkled money into sports, real estate, technology, media and an investment firm focused on private credit. In January 2023, McCourt stepped down as CEO of McCourt Global to focus on Project Liberty but remains executive chairman and 100% owner. McCourt’s assets are worth an estimated $1.4 billion, landing him on Forbes’ billionaires list for the first time this year—though his wealth is a far cry from the estimated $230 billion valuation of ByteDance. He plans to raise money from foundations, endowments, pension funds and the general public as part of his plan to shift users’ accounts to a protocol that gives them more control of their digital identities and data, according to Semafor.

The TikTok bid could run into competition, some from the very same tech giants that are the subject of McCourt’s criticism of the world’s tech infrastructure. McCourt is no stranger to longshot plans, given Project Liberty’s broad mission.

"Approach the situation with the mindset that everything is achievable, and from there, we can confront the obstacles as they arise, tackling them individually," he remarked towards the end of last year regarding his efforts to transform technology. "Ultimately, we can't be certain that any of this will yield success."

McCourt's entrepreneurial journey began in 1893 with the establishment of the McCourt Company by his great-grandfather, a construction firm located in Boston. He pursued higher education at Georgetown University, earning a degree in economics in 1975. Afterward, he returned to Massachusetts, where he began developing real estate in the Boston Seaport area in the 1980s.

He tried to buy his beloved Boston Red Sox in 2001 but lost the bid to billionaires