Enterprise

Here's Steve Ballmer's Other Favorite Thing About Being Wealthy

By Gus Lubin and Julie Bort
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Steve Ballmer Microsoft
Steve Ballmer  AP

Apparently, Steve Ballmer also like buying sports teams.

The ex-Microsoft CEO, worth $15 billion, reportedly won a bidding war with his offer to buy the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion.

Previously, he named another perk as his favorite thing about being so rich. Speaking in March with the dean of Oxford University's School of Business in his first public appearance since leaving Microsoft, he said this was the best part:

I can play just about any golf course I want on the planet. If I can get there someone will take me out to play. I’m a lousy player but I love it.

You thought it would be something bigger and more cosmic? Noooo!

Ballmer, who is 57, also said he's pretty sure he won't spend the rest of his life playing golf "all day, every day."

He said he was currently "rebooting," and looking around for something new to jump into.

Well, he has certainly found it!

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gus lubin
Gus Lubin
Gus worked at Business Insider from 2009 to 2017. Starting as an intern, he did a bit of everything, launching sections covering lifestyle, science, personal finance, military, and more, eventually serving as executive editor of Business Insider and editor-in-chief of Tech Insider.As a writer, some of his favorite stories looked facial bias, the philosophy of Peter Thiel, Chinese ghost cities, self-driving car ethics, the average family on earth, Wikipedia hoax-hunters, income inequality, bleak futurism, global communication patterns, and the worst hotel in New York.As an editor and executive producer, some of his favorite stories include photo essays from the Canadian tar sands to the streets of Cairo, features about Vine stardom and dog cloning, and a documentary on hacking the grid.Gus graduated from Dartmouth College. He interned at Boston Review, 826 Boston, and Yes! Weekly.
Julie Bort
Julie Bort
Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.
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