Ownership & Staff

Front Office

The people behind professional hockey in Baton Rouge — and the right person to call for whatever you need.

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Ownership

Built by winners

Owner

Andreas Johansson

Andreas Johansson has won four league championships in five seasons as an owner. Nobody else in the Federal Prospects Hockey League has won two. He bought the Watertown Wolves in 2020 and closed out his time there with a title. He brought the Black Bears to Binghamton in 2021 and built the first franchise in league history to win three straight Commissioner's Cups. The league named him Executive of the Year for 2023-24. His teams have also led the FPHL in attendance every season he has owned them — winning and filling the building at the same time, which almost nobody in minor-league sport manages. That combination is exactly what a partner is buying: a full house, every night, watching a team that expects to win. He also knows what a sponsor is actually paying for, because he has been one. Outside hockey, Johansson is CEO of Berkovitz Development Group and co-founded Dennis Rodman's Bad Ass Vodka, a national consumer brand built around a global athlete, and he has advised professional athletes on endorsement deals.

Owner & Legal Counsel

Matthew Pace

Matthew Pace leads the ownership group that brought professional hockey back to Baton Rouge — and structuring deals in sport is what he does for a living. A partner at Rimon Law in New York, he has spent his career on the business side of sports: team acquisitions and sales, sponsorships, licensing, media and digital rights. His clients have included the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the New York Cosmos, the ownership group behind the Omaha Storm Chasers and Richmond Flying Squirrels, and the company that holds Pelé's intellectual property. He previously served as executive director of Major League Lacrosse and as general counsel of GM EventWorks, where he ran General Motors' sports and entertainment alliances. In 2025 he was named one of the Top 25 Media and Entertainment Attorneys of the year. What that means for a Kingfish partner is simple: the person at the top of this club has spent twenty years on the other side of sponsorship agreements at the highest level of the industry. He knows what a partnership is supposed to deliver, and he built this one to deliver it.

Owner

Jacob Hector

Jacob Hector is the Baton Rouge in the Baton Rouge Kingfish. Born and raised here, he grew up watching the original Kingfish and is now part of the ownership group that brought the name back to the River Center. Jacob also owns and operates four local businesses — Tiger Nutrition, Happy Scoops Ice Cream Parlor, Bayou Tech Solutions, and Badgers Mechanical. Before becoming part-owner of a professional hockey team, he was a sponsor of two teams in the league. That experience gives him a unique perspective when it comes to partnerships with the Kingfish. Jacob has sat on the other side of the table and written the sponsorship check himself. He understands what local businesses expect from a partnership because he has been in their shoes. His belief in why the Kingfish can succeed is the same philosophy he has built his businesses around: “I think people from Louisiana trust people from Louisiana.”

Owner

Ted Goldthorpe

Ted Goldthorpe is part of the group that brought professional hockey back to Baton Rouge, and he spends his working life deciding which businesses are built to last. A partner at BC Partners, he founded and leads the firm's credit platform. Before that he was president of Apollo Investment Corporation and chief investment officer of Apollo Investment Management, and he spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs, where he was a managing director in the Special Situations Group and ran the firm's bank loan and distressed investing desk. He lectures at Columbia, Wharton and Stanford, and sits on the boards of Riddell, The New School, and South Street Securities. He is Canadian — a Queen's University graduate from Kingston, Ontario — and serves as a director of the Canadian Olympic Foundation, which supports the athletes and coaches of Team Canada. For a business weighing a multi-year partnership, that background is the quiet part of the pitch: this club is owned by people who know what it takes to build something that is still standing in five years.

President & General Manager

MJ Graham

MJ Graham's job is making sure Kingfish partners get something back.

He specializes in one thing: building partnerships that grow the business behind them. Not impressions, not a logo on a board — a program the crowd can act on, follow-up on everyone it reaches, and a straight line between the night and what it produced.

He spent eleven years as a professional player, but the business of the game was always the part that pulled at him. That is the side he moved to and worked his way up through — corporate sponsorship, then assistant general manager of the Columbus River Dragons.

As President and General Manager he leads the front office, corporate partnerships, sponsor activation and revenue strategy for the Kingfish. His approach starts with the business rather than the inventory: figure out what a company needs to grow, then build the partnership around it.

Corporate PartnershipsSponsor Activation11 Seasons ProIgnite Cup ChampionFormer Assistant GM

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