Today, the pace and price tags of team sales are staggering.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe record sale prices demonstrate the strong interest in NBA team ownership,\u201d NBA spokesman Mike Bass tells Front Office Sports.<\/p>\n
Looking at each deal individually shows there are unique drivers for why teams are getting sold. That can include sudden scandals (the Suns sale in 2022 happened after owner Robert Sarver was pushed out amid controversy<\/a> over his use of racially insensitive language and unequal treatment of female employees), as well as patriarch mandates (this year\u2019s Blazers sale<\/a> was in line with the wishes of the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen).<\/p>\n But there are some commonalities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mark Cuban\u2014who stunned the basketball world in 2023 when he sold a controlling interest in the Mavericks<\/a> after nearly 25 years at a $3.5 billion valuation\u2014says that many owners who have recently sold their teams view the current moment as a good time to step aside, especially given the high valuations. The owners who have recently sold include Jeanie Buss (64), Jody Allen (66), and Wyc Grousbeck (64). Cuban is 67.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all are around the same age and at some point you have to consider what comes next for the team and your family and estate,\u201d Cuban tells FOS.<\/p>\n Compare that to some of the recent team buyers and it\u2019s clear Cuban has a point: New Timberwolves owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez are 54 and 50, respectively; new Celtics owner Bill Chisholm is 56, and incoming Blazers owner Tom Dundon is 54.<\/p>\n But age isn\u2019t the only factor at play. Cuban has been vocal in the past about the glaring fact that, in the modern era, teams need to create additional revenue streams, like big real estate developments<\/a> around their arenas. He has also been critical of the rise in private-equity investors<\/a> getting in the game\u2014nearly two-thirds of NBA teams entered this season with at least some connection to private-equity money.<\/p>\n \u201cEconomically, the choices are to become a real estate company around a new or updated arena, bring in [private-equity] money\u2014which many who have not sold are doing\u2014or both,\u201d Cuban tells FOS.<\/p>\n Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n The league formalized a pathway for PE and other institutional investors to take minority stakes in teams in January 2021<\/a>, although the rules remain strict<\/a>. A single PE fund is allowed to hold up to a 20% stake in as many as five teams, but the fund is not allowed to have any governance rights, and cannot have any say in team management matters. No more than 30% of a given team, in total, can be owned by private equity.<\/p>\n Still, private-equity firms are increasingly involved<\/a>: Sixth Street was part of the group that bought the Celtics and also owns a stake in the Spurs; Dyal HomeCourt Partners owns pieces of the Hawks and Timberwolves; and Arctos Partners holds stakes in the Warriors, Kings, and Jazz.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tripp Crews of business valuation and advisory firm Mercer Capital tells FOS the league\u2019s decision to open up its doors to private-equity money is \u201cone key driver\u201d of the trend of recent sales: \u201cBacked by institutional capital, these groups can give legacy owners, whose wealth may be heavily concentrated within a franchise, liquidity options not previously feasible under the old structures.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, Crews says capital injections from private-equity and other institutional investors could \u201cin turn create a more attractive product for television [and] streaming platforms, leading to even more lucrative media-rights deals.\u201d<\/p>\n To that end, the NBA\u2019s new $77 billion media-rights deal<\/a> with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon that kicked in this year represents a 220% increase from the prior deal, reached in 2016 and valued at $24 billion. That deal had been a 180% increase<\/a> from the prior 2007 agreement.<\/p>\n Jesse Silvertown, principal at forensic accounting firm Hesperus, agrees the majority of recent team sales could be attributed to \u201caging owners, estate planning or scandals, which are unpredictable by nature.\u201d<\/p>\n He tells FOS part of the reason there have been more change-of-control sales recently in the NBA compared with the NFL and MLB is that the NBA is \u201cthe most investor-friendly league in North American pro sports,\u201d thanks to a higher cap on private capital, limited labor strife, and a big-money, long-term media-rights deal.<\/p>\n Taken collectively, the current NBA environment is a likely catalyst for more imminent team sales.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess is that this is the start of a trend,\u201d Crews of Mercer Capital tells FOS. \u201cThe combination of soaring valuations and private equity gaining access to this new class of assets should create more of these transactions in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 25% of NBA franchises have changed hands since 2020. This year alone, three franchises announced sales\u2014the Celtics,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-303415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Oct](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/USATSI_24460150_168416385_lowres-scaled.jpg\")
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