The $6.1 Billion Celtics Sale Is Not Street-Legal Yet

It has taken the Timberwolves sale three years and counting to go through. It might not take that long for the sale of the Celtics to get approved, but one thing has become clear this week: Bill Chisholm’s complicated bid to buy the team is not wrapped up yet.

The Grousbeck family announced last week it had an agreement to sell the team to a group of investors, ostensibly led by Chisholm, for $6.1 billion in a multiyear deal that would let Wyc Grousbeck run the franchise until 2028. 

Chisholm is still an obscure figure, and it’s not clear how much money he has, but NBA owners are required to contribute at least 15% of the purchase price when they buy teams. In this case that would mean more than $915 million from Chisholm. 

A spokesperson for Chisholm declined to comment last week when asked by Front Office Sports if he was a billionaire. He did not qualify for popular billionaire lists maintained by Forbes and Bloomberg. The Bloomberg list cuts off at $6.38 billion; an “associate” of Chisholm told the New York Post he was “worth close to $4 billion.”

Chisholm’s private equity company Symphony Technology Group has $12 billion in assets under management.

On Wednesday, Axios reported Chisholm has “committed less money” to the Celtics deal than Sixth Street, the $100 billion San Francisco private equity firm that has reportedly committed $1 billion toward buying the team. 

According to Axios, Sixth Street spending more than Chisholm on the team would violate NBA rules that require PE firms to hold a smaller stake than the primary owner.

A source familiar with the transaction told Front Office Sports that Chisholm was clear on NBA rules and planned on becoming the single biggest owner of the team.

Current Celtics minority owner and losing bidder Steve Pagliuca warned about Chisholm’s bid in a letter to fans last week. “We had no debt or private equity money that would potentially hamstring our ability to compete in the future,” Pagliuca wrote, apparently alluding to the winning bid. The Celtics have hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury tax penalties on their roster coming due as soon as next year, making liquidity essential for any owner who wants to keep the team in NBA title contention, and Pagliuca wrote that his bid was well-capitalized enough to keep winning, “luxury taxes be damned.”

If Chisholm rounds up enough new money to dilute Sixth Street’s stake below the value of his own, he’d be compliant with NBA rules, as long as he continued to own 15% of the team. 

The other possibility raised by Axios is the idea that Chisholm obtain “some sort of waiver from the league.” But NBA commissioner Adam Silver shot that down Thursday at a press conference after the league’s ownership meetings. “At this time, there’s no contemplation of changing our ownership rules,” he said.

Silver said any certainty on the Celtics deal would be premature.

“It’s very early days in that transaction,” he said. “We’re just learning about it. We haven’t had a chance to not just vet potential new owners, but dig into the specifics of the deal.”

Sixth Street did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company owns stakes in teams like the San Antonio Spurs and Real Madrid and recently bought a nine-figure stake in MLB’s San Francisco Giants.