ARMANDO ARORIZO / LOS ANGELES DODGERS
Tucker
Kain
Team: Los Angeles Dodgers (Guggenheim Baseball Management)
Title: CFO (managing director)
Age: 31
Where born: Cleveland
Education: Williams College (B.A., economics)
Career background: Guggenheim Partners before joining Dodgers
Family: Single
Favorite app: Beats Music.
Favorite way to unwind: Playing basketball.
Guilty pleasure: Chocolate.
Worst habit: Checking my emails and phone messages at all times, particularly during meals.
Group supported: The First Tee of South Los Angeles.
Person in the industry I'd most like to meet: Arnold Palmer.
I have a fear of … : Sharks.
Most adventurous thing I’ve ever done is … : A safari in Botswana.
2014 will be a good year if … : The Dodgers win the World Series.
As Guggenheim Partners executives Mark Walter and Todd Boehly sized up a purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, a young vice president in the company’s corporate credit group, Tucker Kain, helped out with the evaluation during the due diligence process.
At the time, Kain was an ascending financial whiz kid with no specific life goal to work in sports — despite the fact that he won a Division III national championship in basketball at Williams College and is the son of former IMG co-CEO Bob Kain. But by the time Guggenheim purchased the club, Kain had impressed his immediate supervisor, Boehly, enough to be considered for a new role. Boehly brought Kain to the West Coast to be CFO for Guggenheim’s new MLB club.
Now, just two years later, the 31-year-old Kain is considered one of the more impressive financial minds in the game. He’s helped facilitate a number of blockbuster deals, including the Dodgers’ 25-year, $7 billion deal with Time Warner Cable as well as pitcher Clayton Kershaw’s seven-year, $215 million deal, reached this past offseason. Kain called the Time Warner Cable deal the highlight of his fledgling career. “It was incredibly gratifying to
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SBJ Podcast:
Executive Editor Abraham Madkour and project editor Mark Mensheha talk about the Forty Under 40 selection process and the class of 2014.
everyone here to see that come to fruition,” he said.
Kain conceded that his transition from the financial services sector to the baseball business has featured a sharp learning curve. “But Mark, Todd, Magic [Johnson] and company have been very careful to put really great leaders here,” he said of the Guggenheim/Dodgers leadership. “Having people like that, it really enabled me to sink my teeth in [and] learn on the job, but kind of be able to bring a bit of a different perspective to how we operate business-wise.”
Kain said he is focused now on continuing to help the club improve its fan experience at Dodger Stadium in a bid to keep attendance figures high. “You can’t imagine the amount of pride the front office takes when we sell out 30 games, like we did last year,” he said.
— Adam Stern
