Ron Fowler

Ronald L. Fowler

• School College of St. Thomas, University of Minnesota

• Born circa 1944

Biographical Information

Ron Fowler became the principal owner of the San Diego Padres in 2012, when he purchased the team from John Moores for $800 million. Also part of the ownership group are former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley and pro golfer Phil Mickelson. The sale was approved by fellow Major League Baseball owners on August 16, 2012.

A businessman from San Diego, CA, Fowler was the CEO of Liquid Investments, Inc., a beer distributorship, when he bought the Padres. He had earler been a Director of the Brick Brewing Company, from 1996 to 2008. His purchase of the Padres was not his first foray into the local professional sports scene, however. He had previously owned the San Diego Sockers of the Major Indoor Soccer League, had chaired the task force charged for finding a site for what became Petco Park, and chaired the city of San Diego's 2003 Super Bowl host committee. He is also a Director of San Diego State University.

He studied economics at College of St. Thomas, then earned his MBA from the University of Minnesota. He began his career working for the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company in Minnesota, where he became a brand manager. He was then recruited to move to the West coast for Lucky Breweries in San Francisco, CA and later Olympia Brewing Company in Washington State. He then moved to San Diego, where he founded Mesa Distributing, then expanding into what became Liquid Investments, which controls distributors all the way into northern California and Colorado.

Not normally an outspoken man, he came out of his reserve on June 1, 2016, when he publicly ripped his team's play on a local radio station. Having spent lavishly to improve the team over the past two seasons, he was frustrated by the lack of results, and an apparent lackadaisical attitude on the part of the players. He said the team's performances had been "embarrassing" and "pathetic" in a tirade that reminded older fans of former owner Ray Kroc's famous denunciation of the Padres' play shortly after he had bought the team in 1974. In 2020, one of his minority partners, Peter Seidler, became team President and as such became the face of the ownership group, splurging on free agent acquisitions until his passing shortly after the end of the 2023 season.

Padres Owners
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John Moores	Ron Fowler (2012-)	current owner