Billionaire Steve Cohen Has a Plan to Become the King of Queens
To win a coveted New York casino license, he’s ‘hired the best team that money can buy.’
Hedge fund titan and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is pursuing a coveted casino license for a gaming facility he wants to build next door to Citi Field in Queens.
Photographer: Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday/Getty Images
Steve Cohen likes to boast that he’ll spend whatever it takes to win.
He did it over three decades building his $27.2 billion investment business, buying the New York Mets for $2.4 billion in 2020 and then assembling a team to win the World Series at such incredible cost — his $353 million payroll is the highest in MLB history — that rival owners dubbed a penalty teams must pay when their payroll exceeds a certain level the “Cohen tax.” (The Cohen Mets haven’t won a World Series yet.)