Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti flips Jupiter Island condo

Petitti sold the unit for a 71% markup seven months after buying it

Tony Petitti and 1500 Beach Road in Tequesta (Getty, IMDb, SeaGlass Jupiter Island)

Tony Petitti and 1500 Beach Road in Tequesta (Getty, IMDb, SeaGlass Jupiter Island)

Tony Petitti flipped his SeaGlass Jupiter Island condo and is heading back to school.

The former chief operating officer of Major League Baseball was hired as the seventh commissioner of the Big Ten Conference on May 15th, and closed on the sale of his SeaGlass unit 10 days later. 

Records show Petitti sold SeaGlass unit 501 at 1500 Beach Road in Tequesta to Deborah and Michael McNicholas, a couple based in Chicago, for $9.4 million. Petitti had purchased the 3,550-square-foot condo for $5.5 million in November, reaping a nearly $4 million — or 71 percent — gain in seven months.

Nick Peterson with Elite Properties & Investments had the listing, and Tom Hughes with Compass brought the buyer. Peterson and Hughes declined to comment on the buyers and seller. 

Petitti is a longtime sports media executive, who got his start after taking his Harvard law degree to ABC Sports in 1988, according to his Sports Illustrated profile. Petitti worked his way up the ranks in sports media roles at ABC, NBC and CBS, before moving to the MLB in 2008 to head the MLB Network. He took over as COO for the MLB in 2015, and held that role until 2020, when he left to become president of sports and entertainment at Activision Blizzard, a Santa Monica, California-based video game company. 

Petitti’s new job is one of the most powerful roles in the world of college sports. He’s taking the reins of the Big Ten now that it has a multibillion-dollar television deal, and new kids on the block USC and UCLA are set to play their first seasons in the conference next year. 

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The Seaglass unit spans three bedrooms, four bathrooms, and one half-bathroom, records show. The kitchen and bathrooms in the unit are finished, but the buyer will have to install flooring, Peterson confirmed. 

Completed in 2022, the 10-story, 21-unit building was developed by a joint venture between Jeffrey Soffer’s Fontainebleau Development and Phillip J. Perko’s Perko Development Partners. 

The condominium’s property spans the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway, with 170 feet of waterfront on both sides. It also has a gym, pool and club room for residents. It is the first new condominium on the island in more than 20 years, according to Peterson. 

The developers completed a $168.8 million sellout of the building in December. Among the buyers were crypto chiefs, private equity investors, and the CEO of Krispy Kreme. 

Petitti listed his condo for $11.8 million in November, just after he closed on his purchase. 

He isn’t the first unit owner to flip a SeaGlass unit. Janet Stern, widow of advertising executive William Stern, sold her condo for $10.7 million in May. She bought it for $6.3 million in November, selling for a 70 percent gain, similar to Petitti.