Canadian movie star and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds confirmed his interest in acquiring the Ottawa Senators while appearing on The Tonight Show Monday night.
Reynolds told host Jimmy Fallon he is looking to form a consortium in order for him to buy the NHL franchise — which was recently put up for sale by the late Eugene Melnyk’s daughters, Olivia and Anna.
“I am trying to (buy the Senators), it’s very expensive, so I need a partner with really deep pockets,” Reynolds said. “It’s called a consortium, when you form a group to buy an entity, and it’s such a fancy way of saying, ‘I need a sugar mommy or a sugar daddy,’ and if that doesn’t happen, I’ll buy a U.S. senator, which everyone can afford.”
Reynolds is from Vancouver but expressed his love for Ottawa, a city he knows well, on the Tonight Show set.
“I grew up in Vancouver, but I also grew up in Ottawa and I spent a long time in Vanier, which is a little town right outside Ottawa,” Reynolds told Fallon.
Reynolds also co-owns Welsh soccer club Wrexham A.F.C., which play in the fifth-tier of English soccer, along with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney.
“Wrexham has consumed half my life and then the other half might be consumed by something like (the Senators),” Reynolds said. “I figured my kids, they got it now, they can do it their own from this point forward. It’s just a Dad-sized hole in the wall.”
Forbes magazine valued the Senators at US$525 million in December 2021, about four months before former owner Eugene Melnyk died.
Within months of Melnyk’s death, the Senators were once again the preferred partner for a proposed arena project to build in Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats area, likely increasing the team’s value. The Senators previously looked at moving to LeBreton Flats, but the plan fell apart with Melnyk and his business partners suing each other.
The Melnyk estate has made it clear that the team will only be sold if the purchaser agrees to keep the team in Ottawa.
Melnyk purchased the Senators in 2003 for US$92 million at a time when the franchise faced bankruptcy and a tenuous future in the nation’s capital.
The team’s day-to-day operations has been handled by the board of directors since Melnyk’s death.
–with files from The Canadian Press
