{"id":209723,"date":"2026-03-28T16:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/209723\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T16:18:11","slug":"billionaire-ufl-owner-betting-on-orlando-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/209723\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire UFL owner betting on Orlando Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday night, the Orlando Storm will take the field for their inaugural game<\/a> in the United Football League, and if you listen closely, you can already hear the whispers.<\/p>\n

Correction: There will be more than just whispers<\/a> when the Storm kick off against the Columbus Aviators at Inter&Co Stadium (8 p.m., ESPN). There will be undisguised, unadulterated skepticism.<\/p>\n

And rightfully so.<\/p>\n

The cynics are saying, HERE WE GO AGAIN.<\/p>\n

Another spring football league. Another Orlando team. Another rich guy throwing money at a start-up everybody assumes will eventually fold.<\/p>\n

Except this time, that rich guy is Mike Repole.<\/p>\n

If you follow Repole\u2019s career, you know this is basically his business model: Find something people say can\u2019t be done, fund it anyway and dare the world to laugh. They laughed when he went up against Gatorade and Powerade with Vitaminwater. They laughed again when he did it with BodyArmor. They laughed again when he became the NIL sugar daddy for a Rick Pitino-coached St. John\u2019s basketball program that had been left for dead but just made the Sweet 16 for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n

And now they\u2019re laughing again.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s exactly the way Repole likes it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love to prove people wrong,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Repole isn\u2019t just a co-owner of the United Football League. He\u2019s one of the main believers \u2014 and, more importantly, one of the main investors. In the startup world, belief is nice, but money is what keeps the lights on. Spring football leagues don\u2019t die because of bad football; they die because they run out of money.<\/p>\n

Repole knows that. It\u2019s why people around the league say this version of spring football feels different. The UFL isn\u2019t a fly-by-night operation running on promises and crossed fingers. It has television deals with ESPN and Fox. It has major investors. It has a partnership model that spreads out the risk. And in Central Florida, it has a billionaire who didn\u2019t just buy into the Orlando Storm; he moved his family and his parents to Orlando five years ago.<\/p>\n

Repole relocated from Queens to Orlando and has made it clear he\u2019s not just investing in a team; he\u2019s investing in a city. He has already committed NIL money to UCF and has tried to talk school administrators into changing the name of the school to \u201cUniversity of Orlando.\u201d He talks about Orlando not only as a serial entrepreneur, but as citizen who loves living in the City Beautiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll always be Mike from Queens, but I chose this city to raise my daughter, and this is where my parents live,\u201d Repole says. \u201cWhen I moved to Orlando, my friends just thought this is where Mickey and Minnie Mouse lived, but this city is so much bigger and better than just Disney. I want to help build this city\u2019s sports landscape and help it thrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the Magic here. We have UCF here. We have Orlando City. We have a women\u2019s soccer team, the Pride, who have won a championship. Now we have the Orlando Storm. And, who knows, maybe it\u2019s the Storm today, and an NHL or Major League Baseball team in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

I love the fact that Repole isn\u2019t just positioning this endeavor as another spring football story; he\u2019s turning it into an Orlando sports story.<\/p>\n

Because if you\u2019ve lived here long enough, you\u2019ve seen this movie before. The Continental Football League. The USFL. The XFL. The AAF. Teams have come and gone, leagues have launched and collapsed, and every time one of them fails, the narrative is always the same:<\/p>\n

Orlando isn\u2019t a big-league sports town.<\/p>\n

But history says otherwise. For the most part, Orlando fans supported those spring leagues. They supported the Renegades, the Rage and the Apollos. In just about every case, the teams drew crowds, but the leagues ran out of money or patience or both.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: Orlando didn\u2019t fail spring football. Spring football failed Orlando.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an important distinction, and it\u2019s why Repole is doing everything possible to make sure this league actually succeeds. For instance, the Storm aren\u2019t playing in the cavernous Camping World Stadium, where 20,000 fans look like 2,000. They\u2019re playing at Orlando City\u2019s Inter&Co Stadium, a 25,000-seat venue that potentially will sound loud and look full.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, it will look \u2014and this is important \u2014 major league.<\/p>\n

Because that\u2019s what Orlando wants to be.<\/p>\n

This is a city that talks openly about landing a Major League Baseball team someday. It already has the NBA, MLS and a growing college sports presence. But if Orlando truly wants to prove itself as a major league sports town, it will support a team that\u2019s not major league.<\/p>\n

If Orlando fans show up at Storm games this spring, it sends a message. It says this isn\u2019t a small-time market. It says this is a city that will support pro football \u2014 especially with the NFL\u2019s Jaguars expected to announce this week that they will play the 2027 season in Orlando while Jacksonville renovates its stadium.<\/p>\n

Mostly, it says this is a city that billionaire entrepreneurs like Mike Repole are smart to bet on.<\/p>\n

And make no mistake, this is a bet.<\/p>\n

Repole made a fortune challenging giants. Vitaminwater and BodyArmor went head-to-head with Gatorade. Most people would call that crazy. Repole called it another day at the office.<\/p>\n

Spring football might be his biggest challenge yet. Not because people don\u2019t like football, but because every other league has eventually collapsed under the weight of reality: travel costs, payroll, television ratings, attention spans and the simple fact that the NFL owns the sport\u2019s calendar.<\/p>\n

But Repole has never been interested in doing things the easy way.<\/p>\n

If history tells us anything, it\u2019s that betting against Mike Repole just because something sounds impossible is usually a bad idea.<\/p>\n

People said you couldn\u2019t challenge Gatorade.<\/p>\n

People said St. John\u2019s basketball was finished.<\/p>\n

And people say spring football will never work.<\/p>\n

Mike Repole hears all of that and sees opportunity in his adopted hometown.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re about to find out if he\u2019s right again.<\/p>\n

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show \u201cGame On\u201d every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com\/listen<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday night, the Orlando Storm will take the field for their inaugural game in the United Football League,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2104,139,141,140,30210,90853,50491],"class_list":["post-209723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-mike-repole","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-storm","tag-spring-football","tag-ufl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}