CELTICS UP FOR SALE?!

As NBA teams spend more money on salaries and hit certain tax penalties, the cost to own a team becomes more prohibitive.  

Yes it is a good time to sell the Celtics.  Wyc and the ownership group have been in the mix for 22 years.  Wyc's explanation for why the team has a for sale sign on the front yard may not be totally related to estate taxes and family planning.  

Consider that the Celtics generated $443 million in revenue in 2023 with an operating income (profit) of $88 million.

Moving into 2nd apron tax penalties are likely to wipe out their profit.  That may be the reason why we are seeing more and more NBA owners put their teams up for sale.  A big question is NBA revenue growth and if that growth can result in increases in the salary CAP and subsequent aprons.  And can those increase offset salary increases.

The NBA is hell bent on artificially creating competition by subsidizing small market teams (lower revenue team) at the expense of teams that can support their ability to acquire and maintain the top talent in the NBA.  The Commissioner says that they want teams to be able to retain their own players.

The Celtics have done that and will now be penalized to the max for it.

I really believe that the NBA needs to change.  I  would get rid of all tax penalties and no spending CAP.  NBA players are entitled to be paid based on 51% of revenue so in a sense there is a CAP in place.  The Celtics would be able to spend 51% of their $443 million in revenue which is $225.9 million.  The NBA could consider increasing that percentage for small market teams.  Small market teams do need to grow their product and maybe the NBA could help to fund that endeavor.  

An additional consideration could be introduced that limits the number of players on a team that can be on a Max contract and a Supermax contract.  In other words, a team like the Knicks could not have 5 supermax players on the team at the same time.

I do not believe that teams should be rewarded for not spending money.  I do not believe teams should be penalized for spending money.

Agree DBoss. It is going to be tough for the Celtics to be able to continue to compete with this roster. I think there should be some type of provision to exempt certain players salaries from the luxury tax. Teams that drafted well and are just rewarding their homegrown players with max contracts should receive some type of tax exemption. I’m not just saying this because it applies to Tatum and Brown, but any team that made a good draft choice and is trying to retain these players should receive some type of relief from the luxury tax.

Sometimes it seems as though the league likes to bring down the teams that have been so successful for so long, As even in the case of GSW and LAL, letting other teams try unsuccessfully to build winners? I know that sounds silly, but why should they want to punish teams for doing well? This should NOT be a problem we should have to look forward to. Having to trade someone just to make it right in their eyes. I know nothing about the CBA but there should be a way of dealing better with this issue

The NBA CBA is a well thought out legal document that has been poked and prodded for decades by the best legal minds brought to the table by billionaire owners and millionaire players (actually, the player's union).  

Each adopted version contained unexpected results and/or unintended consequences.  Some new rules provided loopholes that the richer teams could take advantage of.  The last time a new TV contract kicked in, the huge jump in the salary cap provided for many regrettable contracts and a situation where a 73-win team had enough cap space to sign Kevin Durant.

The goal is to create a healthy league (not just a handful of healthy teams) and to maintain that health as time goes on and the world evolves.  The goal is to share the wealth "fairly" between the owners and the players.

It seems like fans don't have a say.

Ok, I am greedy, I will admit to it!!!!!!!!

Celtics17 wrote:Agree DBoss. It is going to be tough for the Celtics to be able to continue to compete with this roster. I  think there should be some type of provision to exempt certain players salaries from the luxury tax. Teams that drafted well and are just rewarding their homegrown players with max contracts should receive some type of tax exemption. I’m not just saying this because it applies to Tatum and Brown, but any team that made a good draft choice and is trying to  retain these players should receive some type of relief from the luxury tax.

That is not a bad idea.  Maybe home grown talent should be exempt from tax penalties or at the very least maybe  only at a 50% rate.  

There are a few poorly managed NBA teams.  

The Celtics are not one of them.

Saw an opinion the other day that says we should be on the lookout for a Dark Horse in the bidding to be a casino conglomerate.  Sports betting is big and owning a sports franchise makes for a perfect tie-in.  

If this is the case I THINK we should be aware of the possibility that:

1.  We should expect Delaware North, the owners of TD Garden, be one of the bidders.  They are already in greyhound racing and casinos.  They currently operate more than 10,000 video gambling machines in NY, AZ, FL, NH, IL and WV.  Buying a sports franchise that already has a lease in their facility in Massachusetts would be a nice entree to the MA market.  

2.  The Celtics be moved to an arena outside of Boston at the earliest possible opportunity, subject to lease agreements and construction and permits.  Any casino operator not named Delaware North who buys the Celtics is going to want to tap into the entire revenue stream and not just the team related ones.  There is a lot of money to be made in concessions and parking and, if they can cajole a municipality to allow a casino gambling licence anywhere near the arena they'll be in hog heaven.  Imagine, a casino magnate meets with the city council of Natick, or Framingham and offers to build a brand-new sports arena capable of entertaining 20,000 people at least 41 home games a year (and the Ice Capades!).  There are native american tribes in Worcester County and south in Taunton.  Think they wouldn't snap at the opportunity to host a sports arena for an NBA team as well as gain the money from offering gambling concessions to the business that builds that arena and owns that sports team?  As long as the team remains within 50 miles or so of Boston there is no franchise violation with the league office.  According to Google Maps it is 45 miles from Boston to Taunton, 48 miles to Worcester.


The Boston Patriots played in an assortment of arenas, including the Boston College football stadium, before moving to Foxboro Stadium in 1971 and renaming themselves the New England Patriots.  I'm not suggesting anything nearly as radical as that but moving to a suburb of Boston, but still calling themselves the Boston Celtics, isn't a tsunami.


Bob


.

New official name:

The Boston Celtics of Taunton?

I'm basing my comment after prior precedent:

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

This is just an additional factor that hasn't drawn a lot of discussion.
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Thoughts on Grousbeck, new C's owners, and why Henry isn't the answer

John Tomase
Wed, Jul 3, 2024, 12:53 PM EDT·3 min read

Thoughts on Grousbeck, new C's owners, and why Henry isn't the answer originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Still coming to grips with the idea of Wyc Grousbeck – the one Boston owner who shows how much he cares through his actions and not via Apple TV vanity projects – no longer owning the Celtics. So here are some thoughts on Grousbeck's legacy, what a new buyer might look like, and where the other local owners fit in this process, if anywhere.

-- Grousbeck is considered one of the poorest owners in professional sports, with a net worth of only $400 million, and it goes without saying that both halves of that statement are relative. So selling the team answers the basic question of how he could possibly afford upwards of $300 million in looming luxury tax penalties. He can't, so he's moving on.

But the fact that his wealth is not obscene by pro sports standards perhaps helps explain his everyman appeal (again, it's relative). Among Boston's four owners, Grousbeck stands apart. He has never demanded credit by manipulating back channels like the vainglorious Robert Kraft, he's not an absentee landlord like Jeremy Jacobs, and he hasn't become an aloof technocratic asset manager like John Henry.

He's the owner most devoted to winning, and it's a tough blow to lose him.

-- We all love the idea of local ownership, and in a perfect world, Celtics partner Stephen Pagliuca would step right in, increase his stake in the team and become the new majority owner. Pagliuca was a finalist a couple of years ago for English soccer powerhouse Chelsea, which sold for over $5 billion. He should be every Celtics fan's No. 1 choice.

-- Strongly disagree with Darren Rovell's contention that Grousbeck wouldn't be signing players for hundreds of millions if he didn't have a buyer in mind already.

Darren Rovell
@darrenrovell
Signing $430 million in contracts on the day you announce you are selling the team only means one thing: You know who the next owner is.

No responsible business person would pile that debt without approval from who is next.
5:52 PM · Jul 1, 2024

First off, the franchise is more valuable with Jayson Tatum attached to it, so it's not like the Celtics were going to let him walk – max contracts for superstars are the cost of doing business. Secondly, it's hard to imagine serious bidders will be turned off by having a championship core in place. Put another way: anyone whose offer hinged on Derrick White's extension wasn't a real contender in the first place.

-- So who gets the team? This is where we should brace ourselves for the great unknown. When superfan Mark Cuban shockingly sold the Mavericks last year, the buyer was Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons are longtime conservative megadonors who wouldn't be the obvious choices to own a franchise in our most socially conscious league, where players are admonished to shut up and dribble. But here we are.

Or maybe the C's go to a Saudi wealth fund that loses any connection to the city and turns the team into an instrument of sportswashing, as is happening all over European soccer. It's only a matter of time before state-funded ownership comes for iconic U.S. brands, too.

Our ideal owner is a unicorn -- rich enough to afford $300 million luxury tax hits, civic-minded enough to treat the Celtics like a treasured local institution, normal enough not to have any baggage. You don't get that rich without baggage.

-- the three local owners, John Henry is the only one to show an active interest in expanding his portfolio, and it's no secret that Fenway Sports Group would like to add an NBA franchise to its holdings.

But based on recent history, no thank you. There's nothing Henry hates more than writing luxury tax checks. He'd blow up the Celtics so fast in the name of fiscal responsibility, it would be Mookie Betts squared. You can already hear management explaining how unsustainable the current roster is. Nightmare. No.

I don't believe the $400M is close to the actual worth of the Grousbeck family.

I read somewhere that his dad is a billionaire, and 90 years old. (+/-)  They are trying to avoid inheritance taxes and keep as much as they can.  This link indicated his dad plus Wyc add up to $1.8B.  All the articles arrive at that figure, but they use different numbers to get there:

https://clutchpoints.com/wyc-grousbeck-net-worth

https://www.forbes.com/profile/irving-grousbeck/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Irving_Grousbeck

Wyc Grousbeck’s Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

https://heavy.com/sports/nba/boston-celtics/wyc-grousbeck-family/

Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck grew up in Massachusetts and his parents are Irving “Irv” and Sukey Grousbeck. Grousbeck’s father is also a co-owner of the Boston Celtics alongside his son. Grousbeck has two kids from his first marriage and two step-children from his current marriage to Emilia Fazzalari.

Here’s what you need to know about Wyc Grousbeck’s family:

1. Wyc Grousbeck Was Born & Raised in Weston, Massachusetts & His Father Founded a Successful Cable Company
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Grousbeck grew up in Weston, Massachusetts, a small town around 15 miles west of Boston. He has three siblings and his father, Irv Grousbeck, often took them to Fenway Park and Boston Garden, ESPN reported. The family outings instilled in Grousbeck a love for sports.

Grousbeck’s father founded Continental Cablevision with Amos Hostetter Jr. in 1963 and it grew from a small cable company in Ohio to “become the third largest cable systems operator in the United States” over 33 years, its website states. During that time, Irv Grousbeck served as president and then chairman. Grousbeck and Hostetter eventually sold the company for $11.5 billion, ESPN shared.

Irv Grousbeck is an adjunct professor in organizational behavior at Stanford, and his bio states that he has a bachelor of arts degree at Amherst College from 1956 and an MBA from Harvard University, obtained in 1960. He was a lecturer at Harvard Business School in the 1980s and became a consulting professor at Stanford in 1996.

As for Grousbeck, he followed his father’s academic path and attended Noble and Greenough for high school followed by Princeton University, where he obtained a degree in history. The future Celtics owner continued his education with a law degree at the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Standford Business School. According to ESPN, he worked in Silicon Valley for several years as a venture capital lawyer.


2. Wyc Grousbeck’s Father Is Also a Co-Owner of the Celtics & His Mother Is a Huge Fan of the Team

Grousbeck and his father are both co-owners of the Celtics along with Steve Pagliuca ever since buying the storied club back in 2002. They had initially discussed buying the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants but made a successful bid at the Celtics and were introduced as the new owners back in December 2002, ESPN wrote.

Grousbeck recalled going into the locker room to wash up before the press conference to introduce them and said that’s when the magnitude of his new responsibilities sank in. “I’m trying to find the sink, and the counter comes up to my chest and the faucets are up here, and I’m trying to find the mirror,” he recalled. “I’m saying, ‘I’m in the Land of the Giants. What have I done?'” He said their goal from the onset was to “get this right.”

“This is not just any team,” he added. “This is the Celtics.” While Grousbeck and his father are co-owners, his mother Sukey Grousbeck is very much interested in the team as well. Sukey Grousbeck grew up in Quincy, Illinois, and always loved sports, from the moment she was a young girl. She was a cheerleader for football and basketball games at Quincy High School, she told the Herald-Whig, back when she was known as Suzanne Barber.

She met her husband Irving Grousbeck when she was 19 years old. At the time, she was attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts while her future husband was at Harvard Business School and they met at a fraternity party.

They now live in Portola Valley, California, but she still follows the Celtics’ every game despite the distance. “If we lived in Boston, we’d go to every single game, because we’re still huge sports fanatics,” she told the Whig. “As it is, the people out here don’t even know we’re involved with the team, and we like to keep a low profile. Our son enjoys running the team.”

3. Wyc Grousbeck Has 2 Children From His First Marriage, a Daughter & a Son Who Are Both Adults Now

Grousbeck has two children with his ex-wife Corinne, a daughter named Kelsey and a son named Campbell. The parents announced their separation in October 2014 after a 28-year marriage, the Boston Globe reported.

Grousbeck’s eldest child is his daughter Kelsey, who was born around 1990 in Burlingame, California. When she was young, her family moved to Massachusetts and like her father, she attended Noble and Greenough School and graduated in 2008. She also took up rowing, the same sport her dad pursued with great success when he was studying at Princeton. She attended Stanford, where she was on the rowing team, her athletics profile shows.

Kelsey Grousbeck married Matt Cosby in 2018, according to a profile in the Vineyard Gazette. The couple chose Camp Jabberwocky in Martha’s Vineyard for their wedding location as they both volunteered there and the spot holds special memories for Kelsey Grousbeck. She began volunteering there as a teenager, the publication wrote and became the first director of development in 2017 once she obtained her master’s degree in business administration. She is also a professional photographer, as is her husband.

Grousbeck’s son Campbell was born in 1992 when Kelsey was three years old. At the time, the Grousbeck family was living in the Bay Area. Soon after he was born, they learned that he had Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare genetic eye disease that typically leads to “severe visual impairment beginning in infancy,” according to the National Institutes of Health.

The family decided to move back across the country to Massachusetts so Campbell could attend the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, a global leader in education for kids with visual impairments. Grousbeck’s son developed many interests and passions during his time at Perkins and the Celtics owner told ESPN, “He runs track for Perkins. He wrestles for Perkins. He’s on the swimming team. He’s a three-sport athlete.” He added, “Campbell is a pretty smart guy.”

Grousbeck’s mother shared that her son is now a preschool teacher. “He talks to the kids about his blindness and allows them to ask questions,” she told Seeker. She shared in 2017 that Campbell works in music with the Boys and Girls Club, the Boston Herald reported, and also teaches science to kids at the Museum of Science.

4. Wyc Grousbeck’s Son Campbell Is the Reason the Family Moved to Massachusetts & He Eventually Bought the Celtics
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Grousbeck has shared that Campbell is the reason he became the owner of the Celtics. He said if it wasn’t for Campbell getting the LCA diagnosis, they would have never moved to Massachusetts and eventually bought the NBA team. “We would be out in California, probably, and my golf game would be a little bit better, but I wouldn’t be getting ready for a playoff game tonight,” he told ESPN in 2008. “If not for Campbell, we wouldn’t be here.”

Grousbeck didn’t have a job lined up in Massachusetts when the family packed up and moved across the country but it was a leap of faith to get their son the best education possible given his LCA diagnosis. “Wyc didn’t have a job when we came out here, and we had no idea where to live,” Grousbeck’s then-wife Corinne told the publication. “We took a huge risk uprooting the family to come 3,000 miles across the country.”

Campbell attending Perkins was a full-circle moment of sorts for the Grousbeck family as his grandmother Sukey Grousbeck volunteered there more than 10 years before Campbell was born. She told ESPN that she looked after families’ babies while they looked around the school. “I do feel that out of anything bad, goodness arises,” Sukey Grousbeck told the publication. “And I do feel that Campbell is a gift to our family. I think the Celtics and Perkins connection is a beautiful thing, out of happenstance.”

5. Wyc Grousbeck Is Married to Emilia Fazzalari & the 2 Are Also in Business Together

Grousbeck is now married to Emilia Fazzalari, the daughter of Italian immigrants who grew up in Michigan, she shared in an interview with Nasdaq. She went to college at the University of Michigan and graduated with a degree in economics and a concentration in psychology, according to her LinkedIn.

After graduating, Fazzalari moved to New York City and began working in financial services, a career that would see her move up the ranks of Bloomberg L.P. over the next 20 years.


Fazzalari, who has two kids of her own, married Grousbeck in a small ceremony in Las Vegas in January 2017. The couple was set to get married later that year but decided to elope, she shared with Haute Living.

Fazzalari now works as the CEO of Cincoro Tequila, a company she co-founded with her husband and three other NBA owners: Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, Milwaukee Bucks owner Wes Edens and Charlotte Hornets owner and NBA legend Michael Jordan. She said the idea for the company came about in July 2016, when Grousbeck was having several meetings in New York City for an NBA committee with the other owners.

Fazzalari, who loves to entertain, told Nasdaq, “I suggested to him that we all get together as a group over dinner. Everyone agreed – and when the five of us got together that first night, the bond was almost immediate. We began the evening as acquaintances and after sharing a series of stories and discovering a mutual love of tequila, we quickly formed the foundation of a real partnership and friendship.”

No sir, I don't like this. I don't like this one bit at all.


Everything will probably be fine, but things were already almost perfect, so any change is more likely move us away from this peak.

This is scary but, this is the world we are living in. Sorry that Wyc is in this position, but, they brought us two titles. Money rules the world. When you have two players making the kind of money JT and JB are making, it only has one way to go. I have lived thru great owners ...Walter Brown.....to the most disgusting....Paul Gaston and JY Brown. Thought this was a Laker like ownership, but, I guess not. We can only hope of one thing, if some mogul with deep pockets buys this team, we can rest assured it won't be long term. In it to hit quick and get out. Don't know who or what Pags can pull in with him, but he is the biggest hope. Hey, I never thought Cuban would sell the Mavs, he is gone, and so won't Wyc

Gyso,

The disparity in those net worth figures is not uncommon when Forbes and others report on celebrity and business figures.

True or liquid net worth is often far less than stated net worth. There are a lot of tangible non-liquid assets often credited when they shouldn’t be. Leverage is a big factor that has to be considered as well; most buyers of pro sports teams don’t plunk down the ownership stake in a cash lump sum.

Actual net worth is liquid net; what you can hand me today. Assets - liabilities with no consideration for illiquid assets. With Wyc this is the number reported as somewhere just below a half billion. So value of his Celtics shares, business interests (leveraged or not, although you do count cash on hand but not unrealized gain) or equity in things like real estate holdings don’t count in that $400 mil being reported. It’s mainly cash and securities.

Still, you could correctly argue being able to produce $400 mil on the quick is a far cry from poverty level.

I’m not sure about anyone else here, but that’s more than I made last month.

NYCelt,

Part of my point with the post above was to indicate that Wyc isn't the only Grousbeck that has a huge stake in the Celtics ownership.  If you dig deep enough, Irving's name keeps popping up as co-owner.  

Therefore, perhaps the combined wealth of Wyc and Irv should be the number used when discussing the wealth behind the majority owners (father and son), not just that of the son.  

Meanwhile, there's this:

Interesting list. I hope Pags puts together a group and takes the reins. Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos have deep pockets, so that might not be too bad either.

I keep reading that the great hope is that John Henry is not the buyer or head of the acquisition group. He has the capability and has expressed a desire to have an NBA franchise in his collection.

He may be too busy screwing up the Red Sox, Penguins and the Liverpool soccer team.

Read somewhere Bill Simmons said Pags is going to be the next owner of the Celtics. Simmons is a complete fool in my book, nothing he says is either correct or insightful, but in this instance I hope he's right.

If you purchased a used home you will feel better if all the essential systems have been updating with top of the line products.

I read the the Celtics are going to get a new arena and it will be part of a casino, shops and resturants. 

Fans probably should not stress over changes that are coming.  It is really about uncertainties. The Celtics transcend ownership.  Ownership can only strive to be part of the Celtics by demonstrating good stuartship.

Dboss,

I read that, or something similar. As long as it is within 50 miles, the franchise can move, according to the NBA rules. Possible move to southern NH, due to no income taxes.

dboss wrote:If you purchased a used home you will feel better if all the essential systems have been updating with top of the line products.

I read the the Celtics are going to get a new arena and it will be part of a casino, shops and resturants. 

Fans probably should not stress over changes that are coming.  It is really about uncertainties. The Celtics transcend ownership.  Ownership can only strive to be part of the Celtics by demonstrating good stuartship.

https://youtu.be/lHPNP8tc6O4?si=ZAS2ZTVa6TFh8Big

gyso wrote:Dboss,

I read that, or something similar.  As long as it is within 50 miles, the franchise can move, according to the NBA rules.  Possible move to southern NH, due to no income taxes.

That would be an interesting move. Certainly advantageous to the players, since at least half their income from their home games would have no state taxes (not sure if they have to pay taxes in other states for away games, as many other traveling professionals do).

For the fans, it is a mixed bag. It would be cheaper to go to a game where you didn't have to pay $40 to park and deal with Boston traffic to get there. But being to one side of the city makes access from other areas much harder. We're on the South Shore and recently went to one of the PWHL Cup games at UMass Lowell. That was a royal pain in rush hour traffic. Took almost 2 hours to get there, and that's from just south of Boston. If I was coming from Providence or Eastern CT, that wouldn't be a day trip. But going north does make the games more accessible to people from Northern New England.

Saw a video citing an article by Dan Shaughnessey in which Shaughnessy says that Wyc owns 2% or less of the Boston Celtics.  Wyc's response to Shaughnessey's question was a non-denial denial ("we have a Celtics family and I am part of that Celtic family").

It's looking like Wyc's billionaire father, Irving Grousback, is the real money guy in the current ownership group with his son running it as the Managing Partner.  We just assumed that meant he was also the largest shareholder.   Irving is selling his stake because he's turning 90 this month and wants to "get his affairs in order".

It is, therefore, quite possible that not only Pags but Wyc too will be the next owners of the Celtics, effectively buying out Wyc's dad,  perhaps with some others.


That would be an optimal conclusion.


Bob


.

Harold Irving (Irv) has four children.  It's more about untangling his business cross-connections with his family and getting his affairs in order, as BobH mentions.  

Here is a pretty good take on the issue:

bobheckler wrote:Saw a video citing an article by Dan Shaughnessey in which Shaughnessy says that Wyc owns 2% or less of the Boston Celtics.  Wyc's response to Shaughnessey's question was a non-denial denial ("we have a Celtics family and I am part of that Celtic family").

It's looking like Wyc's billionaire father, Irving Grousback, is the real money guy in the current ownership group with his son running it as the Managing Partner.  We just assumed that meant he was also the largest shareholder.   Irving is selling his stake because he's turning 90 this month and wants to "get his affairs in order".

It is, therefore, quite possible that not only Pags but Wyc too will be the next owners of the Celtics, effectively buying out Wyc's dad,  perhaps with some others.


That would be an optimal conclusion.


Bob


.

+1, hopefully this is the reason for the sale, and things will basically remain the same with Pags and Wyc running things.