There was a time not too long ago when sports teams were considered a billionaire's ultimate luxury purchase. Sports was the one area where the super wealthy could still be super fans. But in recent years, the business side of owning a sports franchise has started to overshadow that fun. Money has been flowing into sports, notably from corporate sponsorships, brand new stadiums, and massive television contracts -- and billionaires are taking notice.

10. Micky Arison



Team: Miami Heat
Net worth: $5.7 billion

Carnival Cruises, the company founded by the father of current boss Micky Arison, had a shipwreck of year, at least in terms of public relations. In February 2012 32 passengers were killed when a ship on its Costa line, the Concordia, ran aground in Tuscany. A year later, 4,000 passengers were stranded for days in the Gulf of Mexico with little food and few working bathrooms after an engine fire crippled its ship, Triumph. The stock was immediately slammed but had run up nicely (20%) in the prior 12 months on optimism about renewed consumer spending on vacations. Another positive development on dry land: Arison's NBA team, the Miami Heat, won the 2012 NBA championship, helping boost the franchise's value by 37% to $625 million. .

08. Margarita Louis-Dreyfus



Team: Olympique Marseille
Net worth: $6 billion

Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who is new to the Forbes Billionaires list, has held her own as chairman of the French commodities giant formerly run by her late husband, Robert. Margarita took over when Robert died of leukemia in 2009. In October 2012 she sold the company's energy trading business. She has also raised capital on the public markets for the first time in the firm's 160-year history, issuing $350 million in bonds on the Singapore market. A Russian who is known as "the tsarina" by the French press, she reportedly plans to spend $7 billion on acquisitions over the next five years. She appears to be preparing her three children to join the firm. She reportedly put her twins, Kyril and Mauric, in boarding school in Singapore for a year to expose them to new schools of thought. Her eldest son, Eric, had an internship at Glencore, a competing firm. She married Robert in 1992 after meeting him on a plane in 1988. It was the second marriage for both.

06. Phil Anschutz



Teams: Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Kings
Net worth: $10 billion

Phil Anschutz has made fortunes in oil, railroads and telecom, but his biggest bets are in entertainment. In late 2012 he put his Anschutz Entertainment Group up for sale, hoping to get more than $8 billion. Through AEG, he operates dozens of the world's greatest concert venues like the Staples Center and Nokia Theater in L.A., London's O2, and Shanghai's Mercedes-Benz Arena. He fills his halls with his own in-house entertainment, including the L.A. Lakers and NHL's L.A. Kings. His music division manages rock stars like Justin Bieber, Enrique Iglesias and Jennifer Lopez. His film division has produced the Chronicles of Narnia series. New deal: AEG partnered with Ryan Seacrest and Mark Cuban to rebrand HDNet as a new TV network called AXS. It will feature lots of live entertainment from AEG's venues. AXS is also the name of AEG's new no-fee ticketing venture to compete with Ticketmaster. Anschutz hopes to bring NFL football back to L.A., with plans to build a $1 billion stadium adjacent to the Staples Center. If only he can find a team to buy. He's got plenty of cash to make the deal, having sold oil and gas fields for $1 billion in 2010. Other passions: the art of the American West; his collection of Bierstadts, Remingtons and Russells (now on display in a new Denver museum) could be the world's best. Enjoys the western vistas too; his company Xanterra manages lodges in many national parks, and this year he bought the famed Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs. On his own land in Wyoming, Anschutz is developing a wind farm that could boast 1,000 turbines.