Rapid City’s ECHL team has been owned by the same North Carolina sports agency since 2019. What most fans watching from The Monument likely don’t know is that agency’s own ownership now runs, through several layers, straight up to a billionaire currently under federal investigation for alleged fraud.
The Rush aren’t accused of anything. Nothing here suggests local wrongdoing. But the chain is real, it’s documented, and it’s worth laying out plainly.
The Chain of Command
The Rapid City Rush have been owned by Spire Sports + Entertainment since Spire Hockey, LLC — the North Carolina entity that governs Spire’s hockey holdings — was formed in December 2018.
Jeff Dickerson and T.J. Puchyr founded the parent agency in 2010 and built it into a multi-sport ownership group spanning motorsports, music management, and now several ECHL franchises.
In 2024, Puchyr sold his shares to Dan Towriss. Towriss isn’t a name most Rush fans would recognize, but he’s not a stranger to sports ownership circles — he’s the CEO of Group 1001, an insurance holding company, and CEO of TWG Motorsports, the racing division of TWG Global.
TWG Global is the parent company of Mark Walter — the businessman who, until last week, owned the Los Angeles Lakers, and who still controls the Los Angeles Dodgers, a stake in Chelsea FC, and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.
When Cadillac’s Formula 1 team launched on November 25, 2024, General Motors’ own press release stated plainly that TWG Global “owns and operates” Spire Motorsports, alongside Andretti Global and Wayne Taylor Racing.
Spire’s own website still lists the Rapid City Rush under its current portfolio.
So the line runs:
- Puchyr sells to Towriss (2024)
- Towriss’s TWG Motorsports and Group 1001 both sit under TWG Global
- TWG Global is Mark Walter’s company
- Walter is currently under federal investigation
The Securities Investigation
The investigation has nothing to do with hockey, or sports ownership generally.
It centers on two life insurance companies Walter controls — Delaware Life and Clear Spring — and whether they properly disclosed billions of dollars in loans made to other companies also tied to Walter.
The investigation reportedly began with a federal inquiry into Guggenheim Partners, the asset-management firm Walter leads, over how it represented its revenue to outside parties.
That inquiry expanded after an internal whistleblower raised concerns about how the two insurers were handling money. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan issued grand jury subpoenas in February; the FBI had already executed a search warrant to seize Walter’s phone and computer the previous September. The Securities and Exchange Commission is running a parallel investigation.
Once subpoenaed, Delaware Life and Clear Spring conducted their own internal review — and that review is what turned a quiet inquiry into a major story.
The companies had previously told regulators that roughly 3% of their investment portfolio was tied to Walter-affiliated businesses. The internal review found the real number was closer to $16-17 billion — something like 42% of the portfolio.
Walter has not been charged with anything.
Investigations of this kind can and often do close without any enforcement action. But the scale of the reclassification, paired with Walter’s abrupt sale of the Lakers last week — for $12.5 billion, nearly 25% more than he paid just 14 months earlier — has drawn national scrutiny to his broader business empire.
The Distance from Rapid City
Nothing in the public record ties Spire’s Rapid City operations to the conduct under investigation.
The federal inquiry is specific to Walter’s insurance companies and Guggenheim’s asset-management arm — not to TWG Motorsports, not to Spire, and not to any hockey holding.
What the ownership chain does mean is that Rapid City’s hockey team now sits, structurally, several layers beneath a company whose finances are under active federal scrutiny.
Whether that ever has any practical effect on the Rush is unknown — and there’s no indication right now that it will.
Sourcing
Sources: North Carolina Secretary of State business filings (Spire Holdings LLC, Spire Hockey LLC, Spire Hockey South LLC, Spire Hockey North US LLC, Spire Sports & Entertainment LLC — SOSIDs on file); Delaware Division of Corporations entity record for Vector Investments LLC; General Motors official press release, Nov. 25, 2024 (news.gm.com); Bloomberg Law; Insurance Business magazine; BlackBook Motorsport; Forbes; Yahoo Sports; FindLaw; Moneywise; CBS News; Spire’s own website (spiresportsinc.com).
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