The United Football League announced on June 8th, 2009 that William “Bill” Mayer would be the lead investor in the New York UFL ownership group. Mayer is a New York City local and is the Senior Partner of Park Avenue Equity. Park Avenue has invested nearly $400,000,000 in various ventures. He serves, or has served, on several corporate boards. He has connections to Blackrock Kelso Capital which manages in excess of $1 billion. Mr. Mayer is also a trustee of Columbia Mutual Funds.

Mr. Mayer is also Chairman Emeritus of The Aspen Institute and according to that organization:

William E. Mayer is the Senior Partner of Park Avenue Equity Partners, a private equity firm. From the fall of 1992 until December 1996, Mr. Mayer was a professor and Dean of the College of Business and Management at the University of Maryland. Mr. Mayer worked at The First Boston Corporation (now Credit Suisse), a major investment bank for 23 years where he held numerous management positions including President and CEO. Mr. Mayer is currently a board member of BlackRock Kelso and Lee Enterprises and is a trustee of the Columbia Group of Mutual Funds. Over the past 30 years, he has been a board member of numerous other public and private companies. In July 2006, Mr. Mayer became Chairman of the Board of the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

It is clear from his biography and corporate experience that he is both a major investor and extremely well connected in the business world. Both of which are net positives for the United Football League and their New York franchise. Mr. Mayer is no Mark Cuban-esque sports owner with high name identification within the ESPN universe, but he does exist as a person that folks within the Wall Street Journal universe will know. Those Wall Street Journal-folks might be surprised that a man of his stature is becoming involved in an upstart football league. The fact that Mayer is coming on board is something that – in my opinion – speaks novels about the United Football League business plan.

One of the surprises in the development of the UFL is that they have attracted institutional investors rather than “good ol’ boy” sports owners for their principle investors. Those sort of investors do not place monetary bets on ventures unless they believe that they may one day make money. If they believe that the league will make money then that is an extremely good sign for the future of the league. (Although it does strike me that a debate may open up as to whether these institutional investors might pull the plug quicker than someone in it just to own a team out of civic pride or ego.)

Mr. Mayer is also connected to W.R. Hambrecht (William Hambrecht’s company) through investments which makes for another UFL owner who is connected to Mr. Hambrecht. While neither him nor Paul Pelosi would throw away money just because they are close to Mr. Hambrecht, it is becoming clearer that William Hambrecht is the driving force behind the United Football League. After all long time fans of the UFL will remember that the other original investor, Tim Armstrong, came on board after hearing Mr. Hambrecht speak about the potential for an NFL challenger.

All in all June 8th marks another landmark day for the UFL as another “big money” individual stepped up to the plate to publicly own a UFL team. We here at UFLAccess.com look forward to more announcements in the near future as the league is now four months to kickoff.