Alex Silverman. The WJAL, which launched in 2022 in an effort to revive the sport, recently completed its ninth season. All matches are currently held at JAM Arena in Miami, a jai alai-first facility inside Casino Miami that recently underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation.
“I looked at this as an undervalued sports property,” Gough said. “It’s got real history, it’s got cultural meaning and it’s got unrealized potential. The opportunity is to elevate what already exists and bring it to the next century.”
The league currently consists of six teams, which had previously been licensed to individual investors on a seasonal basis. Prominent team-level investors have included Pro Football HOFer Ray Lewis and former NBA player Udonis Haslem.
Gough earlier this year became the first investor to purchase a team -- the Fireballs -- in perpetuity. Now that he owns the league outright, he intends to sell franchises in a model that more closely resembles traditional North American sports leagues. He said he expects to seek eight-figure fees for ownership, citing similar valuations in other emerging sports.
“You have to have [perpetual ownership] for long-term growth,” Gough said. “If you’ve got a guy that’s buying a team for a year, he’s there to have a good time with his friends, but he’s not thinking 20 years from now -- where’s this league going? That’s why I think switching the model to curate those people so they have a long-term vision also, that’s going to be important for the future of this league.”
Jai alai resembles racquetball, but players use handheld scoops called cestas to propel a hard rubber ball at triple-digit speeds. The sport reached the peak of its popularity in Florida during the 1970s and 1980s, in large part because wagering was allowed under the same state pari-mutuel regulations applied to horse and dog racing.
As many as 15,000 fans at a time would fill dedicated facilities called “frontons,” where they could place bets and watch live matches. A three-year player strike in the late 1980s, however, caused a rapid decline from which jai alai has never recovered.
The WJAL has sought to revive the sport through the introduction of a team-based format called battle court and digital distribution through ESPN+, Fubo and YouTube. Wagering on WJAL matches is available in 25 states through DraftKings, Hard Rock Bet and FanDuel.
While all matches are currently played in Miami, Gough said he intends to introduce geographic identities for the teams beginning in 2027 and eventually host matches in other locations.
George Daniel of Daniel Ebeling Maccia & Cohen represented Gough in his purchase of the WJAL.
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I’ve acquired the World Jai Alai League.
For me, this is about much more than owning a sports property. It’s about taking something with real history, authenticity and cultural relevance, and building what comes next.
Jai Alai has qualities that are incredibly difficult to manufacture: speed, danger, elite athletes, a century of history, a connection to Miami, live wagering, and a sport that is genuinely unlike anything else in the world.
The opportunity now is to build the business around it.
That means investing in the fan experience, storytelling, media, sponsorships, team ownership, player development, distribution and the overall presentation of the sport. It means respecting what made Jai Alai special while being willing to rethink how a modern sports league should look, feel and operate.
I believe the most interesting opportunities are often hiding in plain sight. They are not always created from scratch. Sometimes they already have history, an audience and an incredible product, but need a new vision for what they can become.
There is a lot of work ahead, and that is the part I’m most excited about.
We’re not trying to recreate the past.
We’re building the next era of Jai Alai.
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