New Padres Owners Jose E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones Introduce Themselves With Passionate, Personal Touch

[Steve Drumwright]

Jose E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones had about 50 minutes on Monday to give a first impression of themselves to San Diego Padres fans during their introductory press conference. And the new owners of San Diego’s largest professional sports team appeared to hit a home run. Now, the hard work begins and making sure that first swing wasn’t their best swing. From all impressions, it won’t be. Feliciano and Jones felt genuine and relatable, not typical traits for a billionaire couple.

Feliciano and Jones, who purchased the Padres for an MLB-record $3.9 billion, emphasized family and community, two things that were important to former owner Peter Seidler, who died in November 2024, leading to the sale of the team. But as successful business owners, they also know that while those endeavors are important, so is winning.

“We understand that the Padres, this organization, is nothing without the fans,” Feliciano said. “And we're here for you, we're here as part of this community and we cannot promise that we're going to win, we hope that we're going to win. But we can promise that you're going to have our full dedication, engagement to try to make that happen.”

What Monday’s press conference really did was give an initial glimpse for fans to see the types of people Feliciano and Jones are and how they intend to treat the team. While their personalities are strikingly different—Feliciano, a Puerto Rico native, comes off as more reserved, but that is an easy assumption due to Jones, born in Los Angeles and raised in Washington, D.C, being much more fiery (in a good way)—their vision is unified and the Padres are a personal mission for the couple.

Padres CEO Erik Greupner, under his fourth ownership group, said Feliciano and Jones have a “competitive fire” and are coming along at the right time to take the Padres on the next step of the franchise’s evolution. That means a mix of not only on-field success and being able to sustain that—the Padres are on the verge of making the postseason for the third year in a row, which would be the first time in franchise history they've accomplished that feat—but maintaining the connection with the community and investing in the region. When talking about San Diego, they also made sure to mention “the Baja communities,” not just the city, showing their initial knowledge of the region.

Here are some other takeaways from the press conference:

This Isn’t About Them

A lot of ownership introductions, regardless of sport, end up being a lot of talk about the individual or, in this case, couple. That certainly was not the case Monday. In fact, there was little talk about Feliciano and Jones as individuals. Instead, their words about how they are approaching ownership of the Padres said as much about them as anything else.

“I think we want to continue that legacy that honestly Peter led, to dream big, to do the impossible, right? ... The impossible becomes possible when somebody does it. So let's do it.”

Said Jones: “When we do something, we are committed. We're all in. ... We are so much more than lip service—because some people are only that. We are about living it. So (buying the Padres) was a natural extension (of what we do).”

New Minority Owners In MLB

This was not addressed during the press conference, but Feliciano and Jones give MLB another ownership that is not a white man. Feliciano grew up in Puerto Rico as a fan of the legendary Roberto Clemente, while Jones becomes the first Black person to be a majority MLB owner. There have been a number of women who have been majority owners.

In a part of California that has a minority majority, that will certainly help them relate to Padres fans from the region and beyond, as well as vice versa. Perhaps because Feliciano is the control person, not enough attention has been given to Jones’ presence as a woman, much less a Black woman.

But again, because they didn’t make it about themselves, this wasn’t brought up in the main part of Monday’s festivities. (There were side sessions with assembled media.)

How Will They Approach The Team's Payroll And Finances?

There was an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune that came out the morning of the press conference where Feliciano said of the spending plan: “We’re going to be ambitious with our spending. We are also going to be judicious and disciplined.” A reporter used a slightly different phrasing, which prompted this response from Jones:

“You said aggressively, but intelligently,” Jones said. “I wish we had said that. That's beautiful. We said ambitiously and judiciously, but we will take aggressively and intelligently because I do think it is synonymous with how we are thinking of continuing to grow and build and be competitive.”

Added Feliciano: “I don't want to sound like the baseball executive here. You know, we'll work with A.J. (Preller, the Padres' president of baseball operations), we'll work with Erik. We have been blessed with a team in a city that is supporting us in a way that is allowing us to invest back in that team, in that stadium and that city and we're committed to doing that. We are going to live within our means and that could mean different things in different years. But again, we want to win and we're going to continue supporting that goal in many different ways and that means that at some moments, to use your phrase, we're going to be aggressive. Some people might look at that that way, but we're always going to do it. You know, kind of with keeping the long-term health of the team in mind and I think those are things that we're going to balance. We're thinking about it in not only next week or next series. We're thinking about this in seasons, decades and I think our commitment to this city and to this team is that we're going to continue to do that and again hopefully win along the way.”

Jones finished: “The key thing to understand is that, and Erik, you said it: We are competitive. You don't get to do what we do unless you are competitive and it's important for all of you all to understand that. We want to win. What does that look like? It may take a lot of different pictures, scenarios of what it could be and we will see. But please understand how competitive we are.”

In other words, there aren’t likely to be some of the financial restrictions on Preller like there have been the past two offseasons, but he also isn’t getting a blank checkbook to bring in all of the players he wants.

Beliefs Aligned With San Diego

San Diego, the city, gets overlooked a lot on the national stage because of its television market, which is ranked 30th among all cities, not just MLB cities. Only Kansas City (No. 32) and Milwaukee (No. 38) are smaller. But also being locked to the north by Los Angeles and to the south by Mexico, with not much to the east keeps San Diego from having much reach.

And that’s okay.

“When you think of San Diego, the Baja community, first of all, we're small and mighty,” Feliciano said. “But more importantly, that story, that idea resonates with us. The idea that maybe people underestimate us, people don't think that we're capable of doing what we have done, including winning the bid for the Padres. That motivates us and I see that same grit, that same resilience, that same will to kind of overcome or to you know kind of surprise people that underestimate us. You see that as recently as Saturday, that comeback win. How amazing is that? This team doesn't give up and this city doesn't give up and we won't give up either.”

Use that chip on the shoulder in whatever way helps you.

Ownership Experience, But Learning About San Diego

Feliciano is the co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital, a very large private-equity firm based in Santa Monica. In 2022, Clearlake became a majority owner of Chelsea in the English Premier League, one of the most valuable men’s soccer teams in the world. So he has knowledge of a major pro sports franchise.

But this is a different investment. This is a personal one with Feliciano and Jones owning about 45% of the Padres from their personal fortune. Nothing to do with Clearlake, although his co-founder, Behdad Eghbali, is part of the group of minority owners. They are looking for a place to live in San Diego and will be involved in the community with both the team foundation and their own foundation.

“We have already experienced the ownership of teams and some pretty significant leagues around the world, so we're not rookies from that perspective. We understand that. I think our first job is to learn. To learn a lot about the league, about the Padres, about the people in the organization—and I should say to learn and listen—and then over time, I think will formulate kind of obviously strong opinions about some things and we'll defer to the experts and others. I think, like any owner in any business, you must at some point, hopefully early on, establish clear direction, clear goals. And then when we're deviating from that direction or goals, and at times life happens, you have to do that, we'll we'll chime in. We'll provide additional direction and objectives. There'll be some decisions that we'll be intimately involved in the nitty gritty and others that perhaps we'll delegate or be a little bit kind of less intimately involved. But at the end of the day, kind of our job is to be good stewards of this team for this city and for the Baja communities and to do that with that long-term perspective that owners, multi-generational owners, need to have.”

Added Jones: “We all have to serve somebody and we know we're serving the fans. We want to win.”

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