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Business Rumors
Celtics sale likely to be completed early next year
The Celtics’ ownership group is set to find out how big theirs will be after buying the franchise for $360 million over 22 years ago. The efforts to sell the team kicked off last month. An online data room opened for potential investors, according to two sources briefed on the matter, after vetting by JP Morgan & Chase and BDT & MSD Partners, the two financial firms advising on the sale. Stephen Pagliuca, who currently owns about 20 percent of the franchise, has already expressed interest and could be one of the front-runners to put a group together to purchase control. At this point, the sale is likely to be completed early next year, according to one person familiar with the process.
Grousbeck is the team’s lead governor; he and his father, Irv, own roughly 30 percent of the franchise, according to sources briefed on the Celtics ownership structure. Wyc Grousbeck owns about 2 percent, those sources said. He declined to comment for this story over the summer and did not respond to recent text messages from The Athletic. The team is being sold now, Grousbeck said in a July statement, for family and estate-planning purposes. Irv Grousbeck is 90, and Wyc Grousbeck, 63, has multiple siblings. They can bring minority shareholders along in the sale, but they have their own rights if there is a potential sale. “It’s a really complicated agreement,” said one of the people briefed on the Celtics ownership structure.
Grousbeck said he wants to sell the team in steps, with the majority tranche sold by the winter of 2025, and then retain control until the rest is sold off in 2028. That may prove tricky, especially as NBA commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this year the league may choose to avoid stepped transactions after the current Minnesota Timberwolves saga gets settled. Multiple industry sources pointed out that any prospective owner likely would not want to spend billions of dollars only to wait to take over.
The source told ESPN that the combined entity aims to be one of the most important companies in sports content globally. Discussions, earlier reported by Bloomberg, have been ongoing for the past few months, the source told ESPN. The impetus for the mutual interest came from the shared desire to reach scale across television, film and advertising together.
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Lasry, on selling his share of the Milwaukee Bucks: “I ended up selling because I have five kids, and shockingly, when I bought the team, I put it in trust for them. I had paid $500 million. This time, the team was worth about $3.5 billion. My son said, ‘We want the money now.’ I was like, ‘Well, it’s actually really nice owning the team.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, we’d rather have the money.’ So, I ended up selling.
A busy offseason of signing new sponsors and high-profile renewals has led the NBA to a record 51 marketing partners to start the 2024-25 season. Seven new brands have aligned themselves with pro basketball so far in this year, and several of them are activating with assets that either never existed or lacked a title partner, according to Kerry Tatlock, the NBA’s executive vice president of global partnerships.
