John Textor

Having experienced the highs and lows of corporate America, Textor now appears determined to try European football's rollercoaster.[9] In August 2021, Textor purchased a substantial minority position in Crystal Palace Football Club for a reported £87.5 million, joining Steve Parish, Josh Harris, and David Blitzer as a co-owner.[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]

Months earlier, Textor reached an agreement to buy 25% of the share capital of S.L. Benfica's SAD,[26] a publicly listed company considered the world's 12th largest football (soccer) club.[27] [28] [29] [30][31] If consummated, this would make Textor the largest single shareholder of SL Benfica, other than the SL Benfica Club itself, which still owns 64% of its publicly listed football subsidiary. Prior to narrowing his focus on Benfica and Crystal Palace Football Club, he was linked to efforts to purchase Brentford FC, Watford FC and Newcastle United.[32] [33] Textor's contract to purchase the large stake of SL Benfica has been at least delayed with the arrest of Benfica chairman Luís Filipe Vieira, on unrelated charges, which has thrown the leadership of the Club into turmoil.[34][35] [36] [29]

Textor has long been involved in soccer, both in a professional capacity and as a philanthropist. As Chairman, CEO, and the largest shareholder of Facebank Group, he acquired fuboTV, a sports-focused television streaming service which originally was launched with a near-exclusive focus on streaming world football (soccer) games.[37] [38] [39] [40] Textor is not new to Portuguese football, as fuboTV is known among European and South American football lovers and has a Portuguese TV package, Portuguese Plus, and offers precisely Benfica TV, in addition to RTP Internacional, RTP3, and RTP Azores. [41]

It is perhaps not a coincidence that Jacob Montes, the American midfielder who recently joined Crystal Palace on a one-year deal,[42] has just been signed on loan to play to Belgian side Waasland-Beveren for a trial. Montes is a product of Textor's youth soccer Academy FC Florida Preparatory Academy, a grassroots academy Textor set up more than 20 years ago, and Waasland-Beveren is owned by David Blitzer, a leading Crystal Palace shareholder.[43] [44]

Textor was responsible for the rapid growth of a small public company which, through capital transactions and strategic acquisitions,[45] became fuboTV, Inc., a leading OTT sports and entertainment streaming company, and one of the most successful IPOs of the year 2020.

In August 2018, Textor's early-stage artificial intelligence company, Evolution AI Corporation, was acquired by a publicly listed virtual reality company, Recall Studios, resulting in Textor becoming the largest shareholder and chief executive officer of the combined companies. Simultaneous with this business combination, Recall Studios also purchased a majority of the shares of Pulse Evolution Corporation, a human animation and virtual entertainment company that was originally co-founded by Textor.[46] [47]

By 2019, after a series of small acquisitions, Recall was renamed Facebank Group, then described in SEC filings as a digital human technology company, focused on the development, collection, protection and preparation of the personal digital likeness assets, of celebrities and consumers, for use in artificial intelligence, entertainment, personal productivity and social networking.[48]

In April 2020, Textor completed the acquisition of fuboTVMedia,[49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] via zoom call,[66] in the challenging and rapidly evolving landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic. The combination of Textor's virtual entertainment company, with the fast-growing streaming company FuboTV, resulted in one of 2020's most successful IPOs,[67] and in under two years, grew to an NYSE-listed market value of more than $6 billion. [68]

In the spring of 2020, Textor resigned from his post as Executive Chairman of fuboTV while remaining a member of the board of directors. At the time of his resignation from fuboTV, and through completion of the company's IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, Textor remained the largest shareholder of fuboTV.[69] [70]

FuboTV grew rapidly in value as a public company, moving from the over-the-counter market, to the New York Stock Exchange, to the Russell 3000 index in only 9 months.[71]

In May 2006, Textor acquired Digital Domain with film director Michael Bay. Textor and Bay, as co-chairman, led the $30 million acquisition and restructuring of Digital Domain from May 2006, to a doubling of revenues and cash flow by 2010, and an NYSE valuation of $450 million in Spring 2012. The company was responsible for the visual effects of more than 80 large scale feature films, including such blockbusters as Transformers, Flags of our Fathers, Tron: Legacy, Real Steel, Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End, and Thor.[72]

Under Textor's leadership, Digital Domain was re-established as a market leader in visual effects, winning multiple Academy Awards, Clio awards, and being recognized as the first visual effects company to deliver a believable digital human actor in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This achievement, known as the ‘Holy Grail of Visual Effects’, earned the company a 2009 Academy Award for Achievement in Visual Effects.[73]

In the face of significant negative trends in the visual effects industry, principally the relocation of U.S. jobs to cheaper labor markets, Textor believed it necessary to expand the business into film production, content ownership and new media. In 2009, Digital Domain invested heavily, along with government funded grants, to train a workforce in Florida that was intended to reduce domestic costs, create new domestic jobs and launch the content development business. In 2011, Digital Domain Media Group entered into the film production business with a major investment into the feature film Ender's Game.[74] Textor is credited as Producer and Executive Producer on the film.[75] [76]

Textor's team of artists organized the 2012 appearance of Virtual Tupac Shakur[77] [78] [79] [80] at the Coachella Valley Music Festival.[81] [82] [83] [84] [85] Following that debut, YouTube videos of the performance amassed 15 million views. in just two days, and more than 60 million in the following months. Google search results for Tupac hologram exceeded 50 million. Tupac Shakur album sales jumped 500% and downloads of his song “Hail Mary” rose 1,500% after the two performances. The performance ultimately earned Textor's studio the Titanium Award at the 59th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.[86] [87] [88]

Textor himself is no stranger to controversy as he experienced a high-profile business failure in 2012 when Digital Domain, one of Hollywood's most decorated visual effects specialists, became the subject of a hostile restructuring, led by Textor's once-friendly hedge fund investors. Textor lost control of his company, only to see its U.S. operations restructured through bankruptcy and relaunched through a $3.5 billion IPO in Hong Kong. Textor's personally launched Florida studio was shut down, hundreds of his employees lost their jobs and Textor and his fellow directors, such as John Sculley faced numerous lawsuits related to the shutdown.

He has never denied making mistakes with the business but Textor was cleared of any financial wrongdoing by the courts and the state of Florida's Inspector General,[89] [90] and he later received more than £6 million in a settlement [91] [92] with the hedge funds that were eventually found to have really caused Digital Domain's collapse.

In the resolution of all disputed matters between the Digital Domain interested parties, including the state of Florida, Textor was awarded $8.5 million in financial damages and also assigned all technology assets of Digital Domain's Florida studio. SEC filings[93] demonstrate that Textor used the award of these technology assets to launch the business that would ultimately become fuboTV. [94] [95]

Since then, he has rebuilt his reputation and wealth. In 2013, he launched Facebank, “a technology-driven intellectual property company engaged in the development and promotion of human likeness technologies”, and, in 2020, it bought sports streaming platform fuboTV, merging the two businesses before floating them on the New York Stock Exchange as FuboTV Inc.[96] [97]

In late 2013, Textor organized a group of former Digital Domain employees, including Academy Award-winning digital artists and human animation specialists, to create Pulse Evolution Corporation, a globally recognized pioneer in the development of hyper-realistic digital humans for live shows, virtual reality, augmented reality, holographic, 3D stereoscopic, web, mobile, interactive and artificial intelligence applications.[98] [99] Pulse Evolution first showcased its technology with the holographic performance of Virtual Michael Jackson at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards,[100][101] [102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108][109] [110] generating more than 100 million YouTube views and 98 billion Internet impressions worldwide. The global interest in Virtual Tupac and Virtual Michael Jackson led to ‘pop culture status’ for Textor and his Pulse partner Frank Patterson,[111] as the two were parodied in the holograms episodes of the globally successful animated sitcom, South Park.

Early in his career, Textor was best known for his support of Art Technology Group, a principal pioneer of internet personalization technology. ATG was initially funded by leading private equity investors such as Bain and Softbank, but was dropped and de-funded by mid-1996. Textor's holding company, Wyndcrest Partners, stepped in to fund in 1996, helping the company to support payroll and continue its business plan, guiding the company through one of the most successful IPOs of 1999 and a liquid valuation of more than $10 billion.[112]

VirtualBank also attracted several other high-profile investors, such as Worldcom Chairman Bernie Ebbers, pro football player Dan Marino, and early Microsoft senior manager Carl Stork. These relationships led VirtualBank to launch several affinity branded internet banks for major corporations, such as MicrosoftVirtualBank, EMCVirtualBank, WorldcomVirtualBank, and TextronVirtualBank. In 2004, Lydian Trust was named Private Wealth Manager of the Year by Institutional Investor magazine.[113]

Prior to the popularization of various forms of digital distribution, Textor created an internet-based 3-D multi-user virtual world. The new technology was the first digital distribution platform to be endorsed by Metallica and was also supported by joint-ventures with leading digital rights management companies, such as IBM, and strategic relationships with leading music artists and action sports companies. Jester Digital Corporation was among the earliest to create internet-based multi-user virtual reality and game-like environments which paved the way for the convergence of music and the internet, massive multi-player games, and the digital distribution of entertainment content.[114] [115]

In the early 2000s, Textor took control of BabyUniverse.com,[116] an insolvent e-tailer of baby-related products. BabyUniverse then saw an increase in revenues from $1 million to $40 million, resulting in the October 2007 sale of BabyUniverse into a reverse merger and change of control transaction with eToys.com, a well-known e-commerce company, controlled by D.E. Shaw. Textor resigned as CEO at the time of the merger, with BabyUniverse stock trading at its all-time high of $12.00 per share, having nearly tripled from its low in February of that same year.[117] He later became Chairman of eToys.

Textor served as Chairman of the Board and the principal owner of Sims Snowboards, the world's 2nd leading snowboard brand, having acquired Sims in 1996.[118]