I'm familiar with IMG Academy by name as a unique and weird sports funnel to the NCAA. They put a large chunk of their football and basketball players into D1 programs. Without doing extra digging, it sounds like that's the case for many other sports, as well.
I've always found the prep school model kind of confusing - it seems like those high schools offer scholarships and enticements to blue chip kids to come play for them. I'd assumed that, like colleges, a handful of wealthy alumni donors prop up the sporting operation one way or another, while "normal" kids pay standard parochial tuition prices. There's surely a bit of grift in the process - coaches paid to refer their athletes to one college, shoe brand, or another - but that's not enough to sustain a school budget.
Based on this article, it sounds like IMG Academy relies on a lot of foreign high school students to pay tuition and subsidize these super athletic programs. The boarding school was founded to emphasize tennis and has expanded to other sports. It's one way for wealthy parents to spend their money to advance their children's sports careers and bridge to the next level. The school website and wikipedia page focus entirely on athletics placement.
I would imagine that, like its sports teams placing athletes, the school also works to place foreign students into American undergrad schools. International admissions are always more stringent at the top tier, so I am just imagining that there is another kind of grift going on (IMG Academy charges super-high tuition to rich foreigners, passes that along as "endowment" to US colleges, in turn receives favorable admissions rates, thereby fulfilling the transaction). In less words, the school seems to be serving as a way for wealthy foreigners to buy their kids' way into American college.
The huge price tag infers that this a working business model. However, the school was
bought by Endeavor in 2014 for $2.3 billion, implying it took a
billion-dollar loss to dump this asset. The transfer is interesting - from West to East - because it naturally shifts the control of this admissions pipeline to China (via Hong Kong), ie Chinese students "buying" their way into American colleges, especially past the gatekeeping of the Ivies. I can't find any specifics about Ivy League placement save for the rare student-athletes.
Endeavor Group Holdings, which owns UFC and now WWE, is a talent agency with a huge impact on the products you see on TV and during commercials. It has partnerships with the NFL and NHL, among many others. If the NFL runs a brand advertisement, it does so through Endeavor, which is quoted as a $21 billion company. Endeavor is owned and run by Ari Emanuel, one of the West's top jewish overlords: he is in my estimation the most powerful man in Hollywood. His brother Rahm is the former mayor of Chicago and White House chief of staff under Obama, currently tasked with bringing feminism and homosexuality to Japan; his other brother Zeke helped to orchestrate the covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates from his appointment in the NIH. Their father was an Israeli terrorist who "retired" after the annexation of Palestine to become a Chicago doctor and community activist. These are powerful people backed by the very highest level of financial might.
The new ownership group is a private equity firm BPEA EQT, which has a similar market cap to Endeavor despite 40x less employees. The founder and CEO is one Jean Eric Salata, a "Chilean" globalist who has been a prominent Hong Kong investment banker throughout his adult life. Salata does not have a wikipedia entry, but he is said to have made a "prominent donation" to the United Jewish Congregation of Hong Kong.
Also:
This plays into my theory that the school serves as a feeder system for interested parties from abroad to secure prominent Ivy League admissions under more of a clandestine veil. It's possible that selling IMG Academy was a portfolio divestment of sorts, if Endeavor wants to concentrate on its celebrity-sports entertainment work instead of something rather unrelated. I really can't understand why they would undersell by a billion dollars (if I'm reading this correctly), why this wouldn't be the focus of reporting, and why we're even allowed to learn this much as mere plebs.
The things I am sure of are that such matters are completely out of our control - you do not get to vote for this, you will never get to influence such massive financial levers, and none of us will likely ever know someone with a family member at the IMG Academy.
// this post was meant to be half as long but turned out to be a very deep rabbit hole. feel free to add or amend info as needed
