Co-founder and deputy chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group Joe Tsai agreed to buy 49% in the Brooklyn Nets club of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from Mikhail Prokhorov, the American sports channel ESPN and Bloomberg reported citing their sources. Information about the upcoming deal was confirmed to Vedomosti by a source close to Prokhorov’s Onexim group. The businessman’s representative did not comment on this.
Brooklyn Nets home stadium – Barclays Center arena not included in the deal, add ESPN and Bloomberg. The team for the deal is valued at $ 2.3 billion. Prokhorov’s club is valued dearly, the American media write: recently, the Houston billionaire and TV presenter Tilman Fertitta bought the Houston Rockets basketball club for $ 2.2 billion, along with the arena. At the same time, Brooklyn Nets received its first operating profit of $ 15.7 million only in 2016, Forbes wrote. Prior to that, the club’s losses reached $ 90 million a year. The businessman did not keep his promise to make the team the champion of the NBA: according to the results of the regular season in the 2016/17 season, Brooklyn Nets won only 20 wins in 82 matches. This is the worst record in the NBA and the team’s third consecutive disastrous season, according to ABC News.
The best arenas
According to Pollstar, in the first half of 2017, Barclays Center ranked 9th in the world ranking of arenas in terms of the number of tickets sold for concerts. Opened on April 5, 2017, NYCB Live’s has managed to become one of the top 100 in the world in three months. And Webster Hall has always been one of the top 5 best ticket selling clubs in the world.
By 2021, Tsai, whose fortune, according to Forbes, exceeds $ 9 billion, could bring his stake in the club to a controlling one, a Bloomberg source said. At the same time, Prokhorov will retain a 20% stake. According to ESPN, Prokhorov will remain the head and operational manager of the team for another four years, and Tsai will not intervene in operational management until he gains control.
Prokhorov acquired 80% of Brooklyn Nets from New York (formerly New Jersey Nets. – Vedomosti) and 45% of their new arena under construction from the American developer Bruce Ratner at the end of 2009. The purchase cost the Russian billionaire $ 223 million. for five years he bought the remaining 20% of the club from Ratner. “Prokhorov really caught fire with a basketball project,” his acquaintance recalled in August this year. True, according to him, the Russian entrepreneur paid a symbolic $ 1 for the team itself, the rest of the money was the entrance fee to Ratner’s development project. We are talking about the Atlantic Yards project (later renamed Pacific Park Brooklyn), which provides for the construction in the center of New York not only of the huge Barclays Center arena, but also 16 high-rise residential and office buildings. The cost of the project is estimated at $ 4.9 billion. In addition to the Barclays Center arena, Prokhorov managed to become an investor in three more sports and entertainment facilities: 85% of the project for the reconstruction of NYCB Live’s arena on Long Island, one of the most famous former nightclubs in Manhattan – Webster Hall and the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn. As a result, Prokhorov turned out to be one of the largest players in the American market of sports and entertainment complexes, the industry publication Pollstar noted.
.