How Jeff Lowe Achieved a Net Worth of $5 Million
Tiger King is a true crime documentary released on Netflix. The name refers to Joe Exotic, the one-time owner of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park who is now serving time for both animal abuse and attempted murder for hire. However, Tiger King featured other individuals of note as well. One excellent example would be Jeff Lowe. He tends to be best-known for having been Joe Exotic’s business partner before becoming a police informant on the Netflix documentary.
What Is Jeff Lowe’s Net Worth?
Unsurprisingly, Lowe is believed to be rich. After all, animal parks are expensive. That is particularly true when they specialize in big predators such as lions and tigers, which cost more to feed than their vegetarian counterparts. As a result, Lowe must have had either enough money to pay for such things or enough money to secure the financing needed to pay for such things. Certainly, normal people wouldn’t be able to convince the banks to lend them the money for an animal park. Still, it is interesting to note the sheer extent of Lowe’s estimated wealth. The exact numbers are unavailable for the usual reasons. Nonetheless, Cinemaholic believes that Lowe’s net worth is about $5 to $10 million.
How Did Jeff Lowe Achieve His Net Worth?
There is reason to believe that Lowe came from a well-to-do family. It has been said that his grandfather founded the Robbins Brothers Circus. Thanks to that, Lowe became familiar with big cats when he was still a child. As mentioned earlier, maintaining big predators is expensive, so it seems safe to say that a part of his family had money at the very least. Later on, Lowe went into business. He didn’t go out of his way to break any new ground. Instead, he seems to have chosen tried-and-true ways of making money. A very understandable choice considering the high risks that are inherent to entrepreneurship.
In any case, Lowe is said to have been involved in a couple of kinds of businesses in this period. For starters, he is said to have owned and operated various pet-based businesses. This reflects the fact that he retained his childhood interest in animals as an adult. Subsequently, he is said to have founded a chain of discount retail stores. Generally speaking, those aren’t considered to be the most glamorous businesses that can be found out there.
Even so, discount retail stores are known to have done very well in recent years, so much so that they have been thriving despite the enormous gains that online retailers have been making at the expense of their traditional brick-and-mortar counterparts. This doesn’t say good things for general consumers but this does say good things for discount retail store owners. Presumably, Lowe benefited from this trend, though we can’t be sure without further sources of information on the matter.
Animal Park Money
Other than this, Lowe seems to have had another major source of income before his involvement in the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park. Supposedly, he served as the manager for both Evel Knievel and the man’s son Robbie Knievel for a time. Those who are unfamiliar with those names should know that Evel Knievel was a stuntman who performed more than 75 jumps from one ramp to another ramp while riding a motorcycle. He was very popular in the 1970s, as shown by how he inspired a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. That went away when Knievel assaulted a man who had written an unflattering book about him in 1977.
By the 1990s, he was making money off of his popularity once more, though he never managed to return to the same heights. Meanwhile, Robbie Knievel is Evel Knievel’s son who followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a stuntman. Said individual has performed plenty of impressive feats of his own, though he has never seen the same kind of mainstream popularity. Regardless, both Knievels are believed to have made millions. So if Lowe was indeed their manager for a time, it seems safe to say that he received a portion of their earnings. Other than the Knievel father and son, Lowe is said to have worked with other celebrities as well.
Celebrities He Worked With
The most prominent of these celebrities would be Prince, whose net worth is around $163.2 million at the time of his death in 2016. It has never been claimed that Lowe was Prince’s manager. If he had been, that would be known. Still, he might have earned a notable amount of money from his work with Prince and other celebrities. Some people speculate that Lowe has made money from his ownership of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park as well. Interested individuals can find bits of information about the prices charged for this and that service. Unfortunately, that tells us next-to-nothing about profitability without additional information about visitor numbers and operational costs.
In any case, even if Lowe managed to make money from the animal park, he didn’t do so for very long. This is because the property has been given over to Carole Baskin. Moreover, Newsweek and other publications have made it very clear that Lowe and his wife are permanently banned from exhibiting animals. That can sound strange until one learns that investigations into his operations turned out things such as the partly-burned corpses animals. For that matter, their findings weren’t limited to dead animals. There are other cases of animal abuse such as the wolves that had developed pressure sores. This is from sleeping on concrete floors. Furthermore, there are grizzly bears with captive psychosis from a lack of mental stimulation.
Further Considerations
Summed up, it has been estimated that Lowe has a net worth of $5 to $10 million. Presumably, most of that came from his earlier work. Some of that would be his involvement in various businesses, with the chain of discount retail stores being particularly notable. The rest of that would be his work with various celebrities, the exact nature of which isn’t always known. Lowe’s involvement with animals may have brought him money as well. However, the state of his animal park as revealed by official investigation doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence in that.