Citadel billionaire Ken Griffin’s a soccer guy. His $5 million gift will boost play across Miami

Kenneth Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire who’s making a well-publicized mark on Miami by moving his Citadel financial empire from Chicago to Brickell, while donating millions to local civic and philanthropic projects, is now looking to different fields for his gifting — soccer fields, that is.

Griffin, a longtime futbol aficionado, is donating $5 million to build 50 “mini-pitches” across Miami-Dade County as part of a plan by the U.S. Soccer Foundation to increase opportunities for children in local “underresourced” communities to play soccer. A “pitch” is the traditional English soccer term for a playing field.

Working in tandem with The Children’s Trust, a publicly funded agency in Miami-Dade, the foundation plans to begin installing the mini-pitches and establishing league play in neighborhoods across the county in June. The trust, funded by a small portion of property taxes, provides financial support for children’s services at nonprofits and community groups and would cover the cost of programming at the new mini-pitches.

The $10 million Miami-Dade Soccer Initiative’s ambitious goal: to have all 50 miniature soccer fields open by 2026, when Miami will host a round of World Cup tournament matches, and to serve 36,000 kids by 2030.

The local initiative, unveiled Monday at an affordable community in Miami Gardens that will be home to the pitches, will also expand a foundation-run after-school program, Soccer for Success, that’s been in place in Miami-Dade since 2017 with funding from the Children’s Trust.

“Through soccer, children can experience the benefits of teamwork, the discipline of being an athlete, and the joy of competition,” Griffin said in a statement released by the foundation prior to Monday’s public unveiling.

Griffin, 54, A Daytona Beach native, played soccer in high school and college and helped coach his kids’ soccer teams in Chicago, a spokesman said.

The founder and CEO of the Citadel hedge fund and owner of the separate Citadel Securities has an estimated net worth of $32.6 billion. Last year, Griffin announced he was moving the firms’ headquarters from Chicago to Miami’s Brickell financial district, a process that will take several years.

It’s not the first time the hedge-fund billionaire has made a large soccer-related donation. In Chicago, he made a key $3 million gift in 2017 to a similar project by the U.S. Soccer Foundation, the charitable offshoot of the U.S. Soccer Federation, to develop 50 mini-pitches at parks across the city.

The sites for the Miami-Dade pitches will be selected by the Children’s Trust, the soccer foundation, local governments and community groups. The foundation’s Just Ball League would run teams and matches. Sites for league teams could also include some already existing “community hubs” with outdoor activity such as parks, playgrounds, schools and recreation centers.

Mini-pitches, which are a fraction of the size of a regulation field and usually have an artificial playing surface, are not new to Miami-Dade. The relative scarcity of regulation-size fields combined with the high price of real estate and scarcity of open land have made some mini-pitches and indoor soccer facilities a popular option for youths and adult amateurs in suburbs like Homestead and Hialeah, as well as dense urban neighborhoods like Wynwood. The Underline’s Brickell Backyard section has a busy combination mini-pitch and basketball court, while a nearby garage rooftop is home to a privately run pitch available for a fee.

The soccer foundation’s pitches would be located principally in underserved neighborhoods where kids may be looking to play but where opportunities to do so are rare, and the cost of leagues or travel to fields in other areas can be a barrier.

The foundation said its soccer-based after-school program, which also provides tutoring, nutrition counseling and other supportive services, has been found to improve participants’ health and social and emotional behavior.

Griffin has made other substantial donations locally, including $5 million to Miami’s Underline 10-mile trail and linear park and $5 million to help launch Miami Connect, which provides free high-speed internet to needy families.

in January, Griffin donated $25 million to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital to help pay for a new five-story surgical tower set to open in 2024. The tower, which will be named the Kenneth C. Griffin Surgical Tower, will house pre- and post-surgical care suites.

Griffin and his companies have also been on a real-estate buying spree in South Florida.

Last year, Griffin bought the sprawling former Arsht Estate in Coconut Grove for $106.9 million, a Miami-Dade record for a residential sale. He subsequently made news when his representatives began looking into the possibility of moving the historic William Jennings Bryan house, Villa Serena, that’s part of the estate somewhere else, although so far nothing has come of the idea.

Before buying Villa Serena, Griffin paid $137 million for a mansion and two adjacent lots on Miami Beach’s Star Island. He spent even more — $350 million — to assemble a 20-acre estate stretching from Lake Worth to the Atlantic Ocean on the island of Palm Beach, where he demolished an existing mansion to make way for a new mega-home.

Citadel, meanwhile, has been snapping up commercial properties in Brickell. Earlier this year, Citadel intermediaries paid a record $363 million for a vacant 2.5-acre parcel on Brickell Bay Drive, where the company plans to build a new headquarters skyscraper, and an office tower at 1221 Brickell for $286.5 million.