Pawtucket Soccer Stadium Developer Makes a Lot of Claims - We Fact Checked Them

Pawtucket Soccer Stadium Developer Makes a Lot of Claims - We Fact Checked Them

Brett Johnson is the developer that is proposing the construction of the Pawtucket soccer stadium. Johnson talks a lot. He talks on podcasts and in videos he posts to social media. He talks about the cadre of soccer teams he owns and his financial successes.

He has asked the state and the City of Pawtucket for tens of millions of dollars in subsidies. And, his proposed minor league team will be located in an opportunity zone — a tax haven for investors.

But, some of the things he says and posts cannot be backed up by him or his public relations team.

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There is a near-endless number of deals and claims by Johnson. There are revolving business partners and new initiatives. In the past two months, GoLocal has spent upwards of 100 hours trying to track down the facts behind the claims and the realities.

 

“Brett Johnson — Director and Shareholder at Ipswich Town FC”

One of Johnson’s biggest claims is that he is a Director of the Ipswich Town British soccer club.  It is not true. It is one of the highlights of his bio, including on LinkedIn.

 

 

After multiple emails from GoLocal, Johnson’s spokesperson Michael Raia finally admitted that Johnson is not a director of the Ipswich team. The admission came after GoLocal confirmed to Raia that GoLocal had tracked down the financial documents of the team and that Johnson was not listed as a director in any of the last three years' documents.

Raia, after admitting that Johnson was not a director, then told GoLocal that he will be in the future. 

The project was first announced in 2019 by Governor Gina Raimondo Raia served as communications director for Raimondo. Raia said he left Raimondo's staff before the formal announcement.

When GoLocal asked Raia how much of the Ipswich club Johnson owns, Raia said, “We’re not disclosing private business information.”

GoLocal has been able to determine that Johnson is a minor, very minor shareholder — Johnson owns less than 1% of the British club — which was determined in the Ipswich disclosure forms.

Two weeks ago, GoLocal reported that according to the Ipswich team's financial documents, the club lost approximately $17 million dollars. The Ipswich team did finish high enough in its league to be promoted from the third level to the second level next season in English soccer.

 

 

 

 

Johnson’s Financial Firms and Investments

Johnson is a serial investor and makes big claims about his business track record and successes.

He is partners in a range of investment firms — Fortuitous Partners and Benevolent Capital are two that he highlights most often.

Johnson’s Fortuitous is the lead entity in creating the stadium in Pawtucket.  According to the firm, “Its leadership brings decades of experience in real estate, public and private company operations fund formation/management…” but Johnson’s partners in Fortuitous have changed endlessly in the past few years. Fortuitous in 2021 listed Berke Bakay as one of his partners. Now, Bakay has been removed from the Fortuitous website as have others.

Since January of 2021, also gone from the Fortuitous website are Eric Glass, and Mark Detmer.  Only James Lang continues to be listed on the site.

 

 

According to Raia, Bakay is not an investor in the Pawtucket project. “No, Berke Bakay has no involvement in the Tidewater project or Rhode Island FC,” said Raia.

Although in another section of the site, Bakay’s image remains.

Then there is Brett Johnson’s other financial firm Benevolent Capital which he runs with his twin brother Grant.

According to Raia, Grant Johnson is not an investor in the project.

“Grant Johnson is not an investor in the Tidewater Landing development or Rhode Island FC,” said Raia in an email to GoLocal. 

But in a podcast recorded in November, Grant Johnson told his host and the listeners that he and his brother were developing the project in Rhode Island.

“We are bringing the only professional sports team for the state of Rhode Island because they lost their minor league baseball team, the PawSox, which they lost after 70 years - they moved to Massachusetts so it was a huge blow to the state,” said Grant Johnson.

He goes on to say that the two are teamed together in Benevolent.

“The portfolio at this point includes interest in [an] USL Team in Phoenix Arizona, called Phoenix Rising, a stake in a British Premier League team Ipswich Town a legendary team that people are fanatical about the team, a team in Denmark, a team in Australia and this team in Rhode Island,” said Grant Johnson.

 

Brett Johnson Disavows Some of the Companies Listed on His and His Brother’s Benevolent Capital Website

Among the companies listed is Coco Safar. Raia now says, “Brett Johnson has no involvement with Coco Safar.”

Then, there is another company previously featured by the Johnsons via Benevolent called Zealot Networks, “Brett left Zealot Networks in August of 2016 prior to the company shutting down.  The founder’s legal issues had nothing to do with his involvement with Brett at Zealot,” Raia told GoLocal. 

Brett Johnson in one of his business bios cites his role as Managing Director of Zealot Networks (“Zealot”) from 2015 to 2017. The company shut down unexpectantly in 2016.

 

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A third company Johnson invested in was in the esports space called Glytch.

In March of 2021, Johnson issued a press release on PR Wire, and the headline read, “Brett Johnson Acquires Majority of Glytch Series A and Will Join Board of Directors.”

“Glytch is a perfect example of the next big wave in the growth of the esports industry—companies that provide essential infrastructure for live events in a setting that offers a breadth of live gaming experiences. I'm beyond excited to play a role in the evolution of Glytch,’ said Johnson, CEO/Founder of Benevolent Capital, according to the press release.

Further, Johnson claimed in the release that Glytch had broken ground for a stadium in Los Angeles — it wasn’t true.

There was no stadium.

According to Raia,” After doing final due diligence, Benevolent and Brett Johnson passed on the investment opportunity. Benevolent’s general counsel informed the Glytch CEO of the decision to pass on the opportunity on June 3, 2021.  Benevolent and Brett have no involvement with Glytch.”

Raia claims that some of Johnson's portfolio companies have been successful including a company called TerraCycle. "Benevolent Capital invested in TerraCycle and the company is performing incredibly well.

A 2021 article in Fast Company outlined a lawsuit and settlement involving the company. "New Jersey-based TerraCycle is a recycling company that has partnered with consumer goods brands to make this process easier. But a recent lawsuit—and a settlement this week—shows how many problems exist in the plastic recycling system, and how much work companies still need to do to clean up their practices." An environmental group filed a suit against TerraCycle claiming that its recycling claims were overblown.

 

Soccer Club Ownership

Brett Johnson often trumpets the soccer teams he owns. In a podcast broadcast in 2021, Brett Johnson stated he owned six soccer teams, including owning a small percentage ownership of the team in Phoenix, Arizona.

“I own six clubs around the world including a prominent club in England called Ipswich, and the development rights in Rhode Island. I own this team in Tuscon and a team Denmark,” said Brett Johnson on the podcast. 

But there are even more twists and turns.

On the Jay Young Show, another podcast he recorded in the summer of 2021, Johnson discussed his vast array of investments and, specifically, his soccer clubs. He highlighted the Tuscon FC team.

 

 

“FC Tucson so it's officially in the third division and it's called League One.  So it's probably a million plus [population], you know, market. So it's a fairly sizable market. It's in the southwest part of the United States, which is growing rapidly, so I love the demographic drivers behind Tucson, and I'm working on a downtown stadium which would be transformative. So in a market like that I bring a 10,000 to 15,000 seat stadium,” said Johnson.

“I put my Tucson franchise in that stadium. It’ll transform the equity valuation inherent in the club, but it also transforms Tucson. It's going to give it a significant sports team to get behind and then I'll feed a lot more sports into that stadium and I'll develop a bunch of real estate around it — a multi-family. I'll kind of do an economic analysis at the highest and best, food hall, hotel, multi-family,” said Johnson.

GoLocal published a report last summer on Johnson and the Tuscon club. It played in a small public park facility often in front of hundreds, not thousands of fans.

 

 

 

The Tuscon team appears to have been a bust for Johnson, and less than a year after Johnson's pronouncements about the market opportunity in Tuscon, he turned over the club to the team manager and a local owner. Now, neither Johnson nor Benevolent nor Fortuitous have any interest in the team. According to The Sentinel, "The soccer side will drop back a level, returning to their roots as an amateur squad, but has the option to move back up to be a League One pro team again."

In another podcast a year earlier in 2020, Brett Johnson said Fortuitous Partners was looking to do developments in Baltimore, Cleveland, and other cities around the country.

The claim was made during the taping of a business podcast with Mike Consol on "Shop Talk: Opportunity zone projects anchored by sports stadiums."

Now, Raia says Johnson’s ownership interest is limited to teams in Phoenix, the Ipswich club, and a club in Denmark.

Of course, there is still the project in Pawtucket.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this report said that Raia, now a spokesman for Brett Johnson, was working for Raimondo at the time of the announcement of the stadium project in 2019. Raia said he left Raimondo's staff a number of months before the announcement.