BALTIMORE — Some of the most pleasant evenings of Steve Bisciotti’s life are after a win. The Ravens owner will leave M&T Bank Stadium, head to the Inner Harbor, board a friend’s boat, relax in his hot tub and luxuriate in the good vibes.
“I’m sitting there with a win and I’m going: ‘This is the greatest thing in the world. How many of my friends feel this good about their business?’ ” Bisciotti told a group of local reporters Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings. “Those highs are so incredibly high.”
There are lows, too, days and nights where not even membership in one of the most exclusive clubs in sports — NFL franchise owner — can take the sting out of a defeat or ease the stress of a season. Bisciotti joked that his Ravens-obsessed friends tell him all the time: “I don’t know how you do it.” If losses leave them miserable for days after the game ends, how could he possibly handle them?
After nearly 19 years of owning the Ravens, Bisciotti knows how to manage. There’s still more good than bad — enough to know he’s not interested in a life in which he doesn’t own the Ravens.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bisciotti, 61, said. “I like it enough.”
He might not have to wait long to see what a franchise like the Ravens would be worth. The last NFL team to be sold, the Carolina Panthers, was purchased in May 2018 for a reported $2.3 billion. Denver is the next franchise up for sale; Forbes estimates that the Broncos are valued at $3.8 billion, just above the Ravens’ valuation ($3.4 billion). But with Denver reportedly receiving between six and 19 ownership bids, its sale price could easily exceed $4 billion.
Under Bisciotti, the Ravens have sought stability. They’ve already set into motion their plans to stay at M&T Bank Stadium beyond the 2027 season, when the Ravens’ lease expires. Team officials have started discussions with the Maryland Stadium Authority on a new lease, and Bisciotti was excited about the possibility of further stadium upgrades.
“It’s really comforting to me, because I would sell the team before I would get into a threat to move the team,” said Bisciotti, who bought a 49% stake in the team from Art Modell in 2000 and four years later completed the purchase. “And I told those politicians, [former Maryland House of Delegates Speaker] Mike Busch and [former Maryland Senate President] Mike Miller, years ago, I said, ‘I give you my word: I will not threaten to leave, but I will not put up with [bull]. I’ll sell the team, and I’ll let somebody else make those threats to you.’
“But the end of my life isn’t going to be being the 65-year-old guy threatening to pull my team out of Baltimore. To me, that would single-handedly wipe out all the fun I had for 27 years, right? So it’s not going to happen.”
This part of the NFL calendar is what Bisciotti enjoys the most. With the Ravens still building their roster for next season, with the draft just weeks away, he doesn’t have to fixate on the team’s performance. The pressure’s off. “It’s a pretty good life eight months of the year,” he joked.
Then the season kicks off, and the stress kicks in. Bisciotti said his in-season nerves are “not real enjoyable,” but he puts up with them. General manager Eric DeCosta and executive vice president Ozzie Newsome help him keep perspective on the team, and Bisciotti finds satisfaction in his conversations with coach John Harbaugh.
Home games, of course, can be taxing experiences for Bisciotti, but he’s found it helps to surround himself with loved ones. On some weekends, he’ll cross paths with four generations of family members, all coming together to watch the team he owns.
“I think that having my family around, it’s a unifying thing,” he said. “You get to see your family more than you would. You know, my brother and his wife come up from Atlanta, take my mom out to dinner on Saturday nights, bring her to the game, so it’s a good family deal. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve got grandkids in my suite now, and I can actually pay attention to them for a minute in between series and stuff like that and throw Twizzlers at them. So right now, I’m very happy with it.”
