Lisa Bhathal Merage and her brother, Alex Bhathal, hadn’t even completed their purchase of the Thorns in 2023 when the opportunity to bring a WNBA franchise to Portland fell into their laps.
Now here we are, that WNBA team is still without a name, and the siblings might just be thinking hard about taking a run at the Trail Blazers, too.
As empires go, this would be like if Rome was built in a day.
For their part, the Bhathals’ public position on this puts them in stark contrast to Nike founder Phil Knight, who wasted no time removing himself from the mix.
In a statement to The Oregonian, the Bhathal’s company said, “RAJ Sports is aware of the recent developments regarding the Portland Trail Blazers. As a company, we regularly evaluate strategic opportunities across the sports and real estate landscape, and we approach all such considerations with diligence and discretion. At this time, we have nothing further to share.”
That certainly wasn’t a no.
With Knight no longer interested after Jody Allen ignored his $2 billion offer in 2022, relatively few viable options for ownership with existing ties to Portland exist.
Oh, I know. There is a big jump from the $63 million it cost the Bhathals to pry the Thorns away from Merritt Paulson, and the $125 million the Bhathals put up for the WNBA franchise, to what the Blazers will sell for.
Three billion? Four?
Predicting new owners for a professional sports franchise is a bit like throwing darts at a wall of billionaires. Nobody knows. But the Bhathals presence is impossible to ignore.
Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage
Left photo: Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage introducing the Portland Thorns' new ownership group, RAJ Sports, on Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. Right photo: WNBA Commissioner Catherine Engelbert (right) poses for a photo with the siblings at a press conference awarding Portland the league’s 15th franchise on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024.Sean Meagher/The Oregonian
In the sweepstakes for the franchise, the family’s NBA ties would not doubt be seen as attractive to the league. They’re known to Adam Silver and the board of governors, who will approve any sale.
Swimwear company founder Raj Bhathal, Lisa and Alex’s father, was part of Vivek Ranadive’s group that bought a majority stake in the Sacramento Kings in 2013 for $348 million. Whatever the Bhathals’ contribution was to that sum it has multiplied nearly tenfold in the years since.
Clearly, the family could not have ownership stakes in two NBA teams. But an NBA source with knowledge of the intricacies of ownership matters said there is a process by which the Bhathals could pursue a majority stake in one team while simultaneously unloading a minority stake in another.
So they’re worth keeping an eye on, even if the timing may not exactly be convenient.
RAJ Sports is still in the process of building out its Thorns operation, to say nothing of the WNBA team that starts play next year and currently has one employee, President Inky Son. They broke ground on a new joint training facility for the teams in Hillsboro last month while touting it as the “global epicenter for women’s sports.”
It’s fair to say the (notably male) Blazers don’t exactly fit that model.
But Portland’s NBA franchise is a civic treasure and would be the crown jewel on a sports empire. If the Bhathal family successfully bought the franchise from Paul Allen’s estate, they would, in less than two years, go from complete unknowns to essentially running the city.
There are some questions here.
Is it good for one group to have a monopoly on Portland’s most valuable sports properties?
Do the Bhathals, based in Newport Beach, Calif., even have the wealth to contend with other billionaire bidders who will likely kick the tires on the team?
It’s difficult to nail down just how much they might have at their disposal, given that most of their success has come in private equity.
No member of the Bhathal family appears on Forbes’ list of billionaires. Nor does Bhathal Merage’s husband, investment capitalist Richard Merage, whose family founded the company that created Hot Pockets. That company was sold to Nestle in 2002 for $2.6 billion.
Hot Pockets beget deep pockets.
Still, there is a tremendous gap between incredible wealth and NBA ownership wealth. It would likely take partners. Remember, the Bhathals already have a relationship with Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, who joined the Thorns as an investor last year.
I’m fully into speculation mode now, but Boyle would certainly add some financial heft and credibility to an ownership group.
Ultimately, the names and faces may not matter to Jody Allen, who as the trustee of her brother’s estate faces an obligation to net top dollar.
It already feels like Bhathals are drinking out of a fire hose when it comes to their role in the Portland sports landscape. They’re early in the ownership of one pro team, in the process of launching another and building a massive facility to accommodate them.
A new Blazers owner needs not only to assume the operations of the team, but revitalize them. And implement a plan to massively renovate an aging arena.
Could the Bhathals really have the bandwidth to add all of that to an already heaping plate? On its face it feels unlikely.
But as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
It would have been easy for the Thorns’ owners to throw up a wall and say they weren’t interested. To wish the new owners luck. To say their dance card was full and that they were closed for business. Or, even, to say nothing.
At minimum, however, they want to be in the conversation. To have the conversation. To “evaluate” what could be, in their words, a “strategic opportunity.”
And while names of other interested parties will emerge — some buzzier, others wealthier — the Bhathals stand out because of the significant local presence they have created in such a short time with a flurry of deals.
At this point, what’s one more?
--Bill Oram is the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.