by Who knew the former FRG CEO owned 3 baseball teams?
BROCKTON, Mass. — Pitchers and catchers are about to report for spring training, and for many of us, that means the return of hope and happiness until the Dodgers ruin it all for the rest of us yet again. I’ve often said that life is a terrific metaphor for understanding baseball, because baseball is about the Odyssean quest of setting out on a voyage, then facing trials and tribulations, all in the attempt merely to return safely home. Yes, as Sister Wynona Carr so melodically puts it, “Life is a ball game.”
When I began looking into the Franchise Group debacle two years ago, one of my first orders of business was to learn more about the principals, including and especially then-CEO Brian Kahn and only other board member at that time Bryant Riley. In that research, I stumbled across a mention in a Massachusetts newspaper of a “Brian Kahn” starting up a pro baseball team, the New England Knockouts, in Brockton, Massachusetts, just south of Boston.
Another news story, on the Windy City ThunderBolts, identified that team’s owner as “Florida-based Brian Kahn.” FRG’s Kahn lives in metro Orlando, or did until the sale of his $11.1 million home there last month, according to Realtor.com. I just couldn’t confirm that the Kahn who seemingly loved independent league baseball was the same Kahn at the center of the FRG implosion.
Because of a lawsuit and the court records it generated, I can now confirm that these Kahns are one and the same person, unless, of course, more than one Brian Kahn lived in Windermere, Florida, in southwest Orlando.
Researching for bits and bobs, I turned up the lawsuit filed a year ago by the city of Brockton against Kahn and an entity called New England Pro Baseball, identified as the one-time owners of the Knockouts. Suing in state court in Plymouth County, the city claims the former team owners owe it $68,000 for stadium rents and for a concert held at Campanelli Stadium last year. The suit names Brian Kahn of Lake Louise Drive, Windermere, Florida, or the same address Kahn listed for himself in a prospectus for FRG filed with the SEC in 2020. The legal claim is for breach of contract.
After denying involvement in or knowledge of a $294 million fraud scheme at Prophecy Asset Management, the subject of separate investigations by the SEC and DOJ, Kahn kept a pretty low profile. (He pleaded guilty on Dec. 10 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud relating to Prophecy, for which Kahn was a sub-adviser. He faces up to five years imprisonment.) He decided not to appear at the FRG bankruptcy hearing in May last year to argue his objection against the reorganization plan.
However, Kahn did comment on the Brockton’s action in an email to Law360, which reported on the lawsuit last February.
Last buck?
Calling the claim a “bush league stunt,” presumably intending the baseball pun, Kahn said Brockton’s mayor “knows my family’s recently defunct charity, Brockton Athletic Association, and pro ball team, the New England Knockouts, donated, invested and lost, respectively, over $5 million, including what turned out to be our very last dollar, for the benefit of the Brockton community over the last three years.” Kahn told Law360. “Being kicked when you are down doesn’t feel great.”
Can we go to Supershot Slo Mo on this one, because many would likely challenge Kahn’s call here. This list of challengers likely would include the thousands who lost their jobs at Badcock and American Freight; Ian MacDonald, principal owner of Buddy Mac Holdings; Kahn’s former teammate at Harvard, Brian Gale; heck, even Bryant Riley, who just filed a $735 million lawsuit against Kahn, Kahn’s wife and FRG’s former law firm. We have to add the furniture, bedding and accessories vendors for Badcock, Conn’s, Buddy’s and American Freight, vendors who very much would like to put the FRG bankruptcy and its trail of litigation tears in the rear-view mirror. And this list demands the investors defrauded by Prophecy Asset Management, who would still like to know where that $294 million disappeared to.
Oh, and let’s not forget the city of Brockton, which Law360 described as an “economically struggling community.”
To this long list we might also add RMG Erectors and Constructors of Montana, a company that sued Kahn’s Brockton Athletic Association and/or the Brockton Rox in November 2024, or the month FRG declared bankruptcy, also for breach of contract, according to court documents. (The Knockouts were renamed the Rox.)
RMG claims promotional considerations agreed to and worth $50,000 were not provided by the baseball team. RMG claims it had paid Brockton Athletic Association $25,000 and received nothing in return, then was invoiced by Kahn’s group for a balance of another $25,000 before being threatened with legal action if it did not pay up, according to the filing.
Parable of the unforgiving debtor?
So, Kahn-Brockton Athletic Association-Brockton Rox-New England Pro Baseball owes the city $50,000 in stadium rents for baseball, according to the city. The Knockouts-Rox agreed to a transaction worth that same amount with RMG of Montana. It didn’t pay the city, according to the city’s lawsuit, and neither did it fulfill its end of the contractual bargain with RMG, according to RMG’s lawsuit filed also in Plymouth County. But, the defendants demanded the other half of the $50,000 at the same time Kahn told the city of Brockton that he “personally decided not to make any payments,” according to the case filing.
If you find this all a bit nauseating, what cures all ills, including and especially winter’s cabin fever? Why, baseball, of course. Thus, I was fascinated to see that stepping in to buy the Frontier League Rox was, among other parties, none other than Jim Rice, member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and someone I remember watching play outfield for the Boston Red Sox. (The new owners, including Rice, are not involved in any of the rent payment litigation.)
According to public records, the Brockton Athletic Association is (or was) a nonprofit organized in December 2023 by Kahn and his family, Nicholas Desrosiers and Scott Proefrock. You might have heard of Proefrock. He was assistant general manager for the Tampa Rays for the first eight years of that club’s existence, and he held the same position for the Philadelphia Phillies.
As the newspaper article mentioned, Kahn also once owned the ThunderBolts in Crestwood, Illinois, outside of Chicago. A Cincinnati group bought the club in October 2024, the group that owns the Florence (Kentucky) Y’alls, also in the Frontier League.
And that $11.1 million home Kahn reportedly just offloaded? I am told that it once belonged to another Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey Jr. See, even in a column about baseball, it was all about coming home again.
With apologies to Merv Rabin, may he rest in peace, here’s to a team not named the Dodgers winning the World Series.
