Philip Anschutz

Philip Frederick Anschutz (born December 28, 1939) is an American billionaire businessman who owns or controls companies in a variety of industries, including energy, railroads, real estate, sports, newspapers, movies, theaters, arenas and music.

Anschutz graduated from Wichita High School East in 1957, and in 1961 earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Kansas, where he was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

In 1961, he bought out his father's oil drilling company, Circle A Drilling, and earned large returns in Wyoming.

He invested in stocks, real estate and railroads.

He expanded his investments to sports and entertainment companies, co-founding the American association football/soccer league Major League Soccer as well as multiple soccer teams, including the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chicago Fire, Colorado Rapids, Houston Dynamo, San Jose Earthquakes, and the New York/New Jersey MetroStars.

Anschutz is the principal owner of the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings and was a minority owner of the National Basketball Association's Los Angeles Lakers until selling his interest in 2021.

He also owns stakes in performance venues, including the Staples Center, The O2, London, and the Dignity Health Sports Park.

Through his ownership of Walden Media, he has invested in films such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Ray, and Joshua.

Through AEG Live, he owns the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Sea Island Resorts and The Broadmoor hotel in Colorado.

He is also the namesake of CU Anschutz, the medical campus of the University of Colorado.

In 2023, Forbes ranked him the 45th richest person in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $10.1 billion.

Anschutz was born in Russell, Kansas, the son of Marian (née Pfister) and Frederick Benjamin Anschutz.

His father was an oil tycoon and land investor who invested in ranches in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and eventually went into the oil-drilling business.

His grandfather, Carl Anschutz, was an ethnic German who emigrated from Russia and started the Farmers State Bank in Russell.

Anschutz grew up in Russell, as did Bob Dole.

He also lived in Wichita, and Hays, Kansas.

In later years, Anschutz contributed to Dole's political campaigns.

In 1970, Anschutz bought the 250,000-acre (1,000 km2) Baughman Farms, one of the country's largest farming corporations, in Liberal, Kansas, for $10 million.

The following year, he acquired 9 million acres (36,000 km2) along the Utah-Wyoming border.

This produced his first fortune in the oil business.

In the early 1980s, the Anschutz Ranch, with its billion-barrel (160,000,000 m³) oil pocket, became the largest oil field discovery in the United States since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 1968.

In 1982, Anschutz sold an interest in it to Mobil Oil for $500 million.

For several years, Anschutz was Colorado's sole billionaire.

With his acquisition of land in other Western states, he became one of the 100 largest landholders in the United States.

Anschutz then moved into railroads and telecommunications before venturing into the entertainment industry.

In 1984, Anschutz entered the railroad business by purchasing the Rio Grande Railroad's holding company, Rio Grande Industries.

In 1988, the Rio Grande railroad purchased the Southern Pacific Railroad under his direction.

Before the merger, he was a director of Southern Pacific from June 1988 to September 1996, and non-executive chairman of Southern Pacific from 1993 to September 1996.

In November 1993, he became Director and chairman of the Board of Qwest, stepping down as a non-executive co-chairman in 2002 but remaining on the board.

He has also been a director for Pacific Energy Partners and served on the boards of the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., and the National Petroleum Council in Washington, D.C.

He was also a director of Forest Oil Corporation beginning in 1995.

With the merger of the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific Corporation in September 1996, Anschutz became vice-chairman of Union Pacific.

In 1999, Fortune magazine compared him to the 19th-century tycoon J.P. Morgan, as both men "struck it rich in a fundamentally different way: they operated across an astounding array of industries, mastering and reshaping entire economic landscapes."

In May 2001, the Bush administration upheld Anschutz's right to drill an exploratory oil well at Weatherman Draw in south-central Montana, where Native American tribes wanted to preserve sacred rock drawings.

Environmental groups, preservationists, and ten Native American tribes appealed the decision without success.

In April 2002, the Anschutz Exploration Corporation gave up its plans to drill for oil in the area.

In 2004, he purchased the parent company of the Journal Newspapers, which under Anschutz's direction became the American conservative editorial newspaper Washington Examiner.

Anschutz is the son of Fred and Marian Pfister Anschutz.

They donated its leases for oil and gas rights to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has pledged to let the leases expire, and the Bureau of Land Management said it had no plans to permit further leases there and would consider formal withdrawal of the 4,268-acre (17 km2) site from mineral leasing in its 2004 management plan.

In recognition of its preservation efforts, The National Trust for Historic Preservation presented its President's Award to the Anschutz Exploration Corporation.