Oprah Winfrey reportedly is interested in bidding on the Los Angeles Clippers if the NBA board of governors is able to force embattled owner Donald Sterling to sell the team, according to one report.
Winfrey, David Geffen and Larry Ellison are joining together to make a bid to buy the Clippers, Geffen told ESPN on Wednesday.
Geffen said the Clippers would be run by him and Ellison, while Winfrey would be an investor.
"Oprah is not interested in running the team," Geffen told ESPN. "She thinks it would be a great thing for an important black American to own (another) franchise.
"The team deserves a better group of owners, who want to win. Larry would sooner die than fail. I would sooner die than fail. Larry's a sportsman, we've talked about this for a long time. Between the three of us, we have a good shot."
Forbes magazine estimates Winfrey, whose eponymous talk show was taped in Chicago, is worth nearly $3 billion, with the NBA’s Clippers worth an estimated $575 million.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Tuesday announced Sterling had been banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million and would invoke league rules to hold a vote to force him to sell the team. He said he expected owners would support the move. It was not clear when any such vote would take place.
Magic Johnson, an NBA Hall of Famer with the L.A. Lakers who has gone on to head an ownership group that purchased the Dodgers, has been mentioned as a possible buyer, and a number of other tycoons have been suggested as being interested in buying the team.
Ellison is the chief executive officer of software giant Oracle Corp.
Geffen, a media mogul with a net worth estimated by Forbes of $6.2 billion, reportedly tried to buy a controlling stake in the Clippers in 2010 but was rebuffed by Sterling, a billionaire who made his fortune in Beverly Hills real estate and bought the Clippers for $12 million in 1981.
What is the team worth?
Sterling paid $12.5 million for the Clippers in 1981. The team sale is going to crush the Bucks' sale price and could reach $1 billion. The NBA is on the verge of signing a new national TV package that is expected to top $2 billion annually, compared to $930 million a year under the old deals. The Clippers local TV deal with Fox Sports expires after the 2015-16 season and will be renewed at a massive premium. The Los Angeles Lakers just kicked off a 20-year, $3.6 billion local deal with Time Warner Cable.
The Clippers and Lakers have the NBA's two longest tenured owners and an NBA franchise has not come up for sale in the L.A. market in more than 30 years. Southern California is loaded with wealthy sports fans that will pay through the nose to join the NBA's exclusive club of owners.
Here are some of the leading candidates, according to Forbes, to be the next owners of the Clippers ranked from highly unlikely to the favorites.
Floyd Mayweather
Mayweather threw his name in the ring Tuesday while talking to the media promoting his Saturday fight with Marcos Maidana in Las Vegas. "I called Al (Haymon) today about that to see if me, Leonard (Ellerbe) and Al, and hopefully Richard (Schaefer) and a couple of other guys, a couple other of my billionaire guys, we can come together and see what we can come up with," Mayweather said. "Hopefully, we can do it, and it's not just talk. Mayweather has made more than $350 million during his boxing career, but carries too much baggage to garner entry into the NBA club. A jail sentence for domestic violence, a penchant for gambling and his own racist rant against Manny Pacquiao are a few of the strikes against a bid involving Mayweather.
Oscar De La Hoya
De La Hoya retired as a boxer in 2009, and has built the biggest boxing promotion firm in the U.S. with the help of Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer. De La Hoya has a statue outside of the Staples Center, but that is likely to be as close as De La Hoya gets to Staples. He has his own baggage, including photos of him in fishnet stockings and multiple trips to rehab.
Billy Crystal
Crystal's name has been bandied about by others. The comedian/actor and long-time Clippers superfan was asked this week about buying the team. He responded in jest: "We're in negotiations." Crystal owns a small piece of the Arizona Diamondbacks, but don't expect him to be the Clippers boss.
Chris Hansen
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1nIPURA
0 comments:
Post a Comment