Now that the Celtics
have been sold to Bill Chisholm for a record $6.1B, pending approval of the NBA’s Board of Governors, the league is expected to begin exploring expansion in earnest, sources told SBJ.
Front-running expansion cities such as Seattle, Las Vegas and Mexico City had hoped expansion would be fast-tracked following
the league’s 11-year, $77B media rights deal, but there were two apparent roadblocks up until now. First, league owners were not enamored with splitting shares of the incoming media rights money with a pair of expansion franchises. Secondly, the league wanted to see how much the Celtics sold for before setting expansion prices.
The number Chisolm reportedly paid for the Celtics -- which one team executive today called a “great price” -- could appease the owners who were initially lukewarm on expansion. Not only would the $6.1B sale be the highest for a franchise in North American Sports history (by far eclipsing
the NBA-record $4B paid by Mat Ishbia for the Suns), but executives leaguewide had never believed current owner Wyc Grousbeckwould receive a figure that exorbitant.
The Celtics, for instance, do not own their arena, TD Garden, are believed to be $22M over the second tax apron this season and -- barring roster buyouts -- could have the most extreme payroll in league history next year, costing them between $400M and $500M in luxury tax fees. Add in the fact that Grousbeck purportedly will remain the team’s CEO and governor until 2028, several executives had expected the sale to be considerably less than $6B.
“Who knows what’s going on?,” a team executive had said last week. “Wyc still wants some control and he’s involved, and nobody really wants to do that. … But they do have a lot of potential buyers. My gut I just don’t know if you’re going to sell a team for $5B plus. Because why? Why would you ever let Wyc or anybody else still be involved in it? I think nobody’s interested in that.
“They’re also in a precarious situation. They’ve got to reduce their costs. They are going to pay 200 and something million dollars in luxury tax. So whatever the number is, it’s insane.”
However, with that exorbitant $6.1B sales price, expansion fees could rise and benefit the rest of the league. Next season, each team will receive $142M in media rights money -- with that number then climbing 7% annually the following 10 seasons -- and owners will have to decide whether the expansion money offsets a loss of TV money disbursements.
The earliest the Celtics sale could be approved is at the Board of Governors meeting at the end of this month, though that could be too soon for the league to vet Chisholm.
