Revealed: Details of Erick Thohir’s fruitful D.C. United sale, and why the city wasn’t owed a cut of it

In the summer of 2018, when news broke that D.C. United majority owner Erick Thohir had sold his share of the club to minority owner Jason Levien and a collection of other investors, details of the transaction were scant. The D.C. government had written language into United’s stadium lease designed to protect the city in the case the team was “flipped,” moved along to new investors quickly after the stadium’s opening. One source put Thohir’s final profit on his ownership in D.C. United at approximately $80-$90 million. Put simply, Thohir was largely a “silent investor” in the club — while Levien’s share of United was significantly smaller, he remained at the helm of the club’s front office. Levien outlines the reasoning for that in correspondence sent to D.C.’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development on August 8th of last year, obtained by The Athletic via a Freedom of Information Act request and provided below: Though no majority voting interest changed hands, it’s unquestionable that the bulk of the cash associated with United’s ownership changed hands, and undeniable that one now-former investor in the club made nearly a hundred million dollars, leaving just weeks after the completion of the in-part publicly-funded project.