For much of the last eight months, the ongoing sale of the Boston Celtics was among the industry’s most closely followed transactions. On Thursday, current team owners announced a deal to sell the club for record price to a buyer few people knew was even interested prior to last week.
Under the agreement, a group led by Symphony Technology Group managing partner William Chisholm will buy 51% of the Celtics at a $6.1 billion valuation. The deal, which will likely have a wide-ranging impact on the NBA, raises a series of new questions about financing and deal structure. The bid is not fully financed right now, for example, and a number of existing Celtics investors have roll-over rights that could impact the back-end of this sale.
Here are six immediate Sportico takeaways about the transaction:
1. $6.1 Billion?!
This would be the highest price ever paid for control of a sports team. It’s $2 billion higher than the prior NBA record—the $4 billion valuation on Mat Ishbia’s purchase of the Phoenix Suns—and a shade more than the $6.05 billion that Josh Harris paid to buy the NFL’s Washington Commanders.
Most notably, however, there were real doubts about whether the Celtics would sell for close to that number. The team is one of the NBA’s most storied and valuable franchises, but at a time when real estate and media are the ancillary businesses that really drive valuation upside, the Celtics are limited. They are a tenant in their home arena and only own about 20% of their local media partner. There are plenty of sports and finance experts who thought the team would sell for a number closer to $5 billion. Sportico most recently valued the team at $5.66 billion.
2. Deal Structure
Shortly after the Celtics owners said the team would be sold last July, team governor Wyc Grousbeck said he hoped to sell the franchise in two stages—51% now, and the rest in 2028—with the provision that he stay in control until the second transaction closes.
The Chisholm deal is happening on those terms, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the structure. Should the deal close, the group will buy the first 51% at that $6.1 billion valuation. The rest of the deal will happen at a valuation of about $7 billion, the sources said, giving the deal a rough blended valuation of $6.6 billion, albeit over multiple years. Again, the specifics of that second payment are unclear, because it’s still uncertain which minority owners will choose to remain equity holders in the team. Grousbeck will remain in place as governor until the end of the 2027-28 season.
While it’s highly unlikely the NBA would balk at this structure, particularly at a $6.1 billion valuation, it comes as the league awaits a conclusion in the long-running sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore agreed in 2021 to buy the team from Glen Taylor over the course of four transactions, and they’ve been locked in a legal battle for the past year. Lore and Rodriguez spent years raising the money for successive payments, and Taylor tried to terminate the deal because of a missed deadline. Commissioner Adam Silver said last year that while every deal should be evaluated individually, the league might need to reexamine its approach to tiered transactions.
“I think once the dust clears on this deal, it may cause us to reassess what sort of transactions we should allow,” he said.
3. Financing
That Timberwolves deal was on shaky footing even before Taylor announced last March that he would try to terminate it. Rodriguez and Lore did not have all the money secured when the deal was initially announced and approved by fellow NBA owners. It created a strange dynamic, where the buyers had a deal in place to continue buying the team, but were also in the market trying to secure their financing.
While many sports teams sell in a tidy single transaction, not all of them do, certainly not at this stage. In this Celtics deal, the group is not fully financed, according to multiple people familiar with the details. Further muddying the waters, there are Celtics investors who have roll-over rights, one source said—they can either exit at the sticker price or choose to stay on as minority owners in the team.
It’s unclear how much the group has committed or how much Chisholm is contributing—a rep for the buyers declined to comment. Chisholm is not on Bloomberg’s billionaires index, which cuts off at $6.36 billion. His group includes private equity giant Sixth Street, which has more than $100 billion under management, but can only hold a maximum of 20% of a single team’s equity. Others in the group include Rob Hale, a current Celtics investor, and Bruce A. Beal Jr., president of Related Companies.
4. Bill Who?
Sportico broke the news last week that Chisholm was one of four bidders engaged in the Celtics process. Before that, there was basically nothing publicly linking him to this process or any other billion-dollar sports sale in the past. (For more on Chisholm, here is a brief profile).
His emergence bolsters the argument that as sports team valuations continue to grow, so too does the roster of rich people interested in owning teams. There’s been much debate, particularly in the NFL and NBA, about whether franchises are becoming too big to sell. Having new bidders emerging when teams like the Celtics hit the market is good news for anyone with a vested interest in franchise appreciation.
5. NBA Expansion
NBA owners obviously love this $6.1 billion number—it basically makes every team more valuable as of Friday morning. But the record number also has a huge impact on teams for another reason. The NBA expected to add two teams in the coming years. Both those teams will pay hefty expansion fees to join the league, money that will be distributed directly to existing owners.
The Celtics sale price is a new benchmark off which to start negotiations for ownership groups from Seattle, Las Vegas or other cities that might push for a team. Could the NBA expansion fee be $5 billion? Could it be more? This week’s news likely only boosts the number.
6. Pagliuca’s Comments
For months, existing Celtics investor Steve Pagliuca was viewed as the frontrunner to win the team. Part of that was his insider status, and part of that was the fact that it was unclear if there were any other serious bidders.
In a statement posted on X shortly after the news broke, Pagliuca said his group “made a fully guaranteed and financed offer at a record price.” Perhaps throwing shade at the Chisholm group’s bid, he added that his offer had “no debt or private equity money that would potentially hamstring [the Celtics’] ability to compete in the future.”
Perhaps most notably, he added: “If the announced transaction does not end up being finalized, my partners and I are ready to check back into the game and bring it home.”