Yahoo: Seattle-based group looking to buy Sacramento Kings raises offer by $75 millio

Revrag

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When the NBA Board of Governors Relocation Committee unanimously recommended last Monday that the Sacramento Kings not be sold to a Seattle-based ownership group intent on relocating the franchise to Washington, it seemed that the effort spearheaded by hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to bring back NBA basketball back to Seattle had reached its conclusion. But after the board's decision, Hansen and his partners told supporters eager for the return of the SuperSonics that they "remain fully committed" to completing the purchase agreement they'd reached with the Maloof family to buy a controlling interest in the Kings ... and on Friday afternoon, Hansen and company raised the stakes by once again raising their bid, this time by a cool $75 million. The initial report of the increased offer by Chris Daniels of KING5 in Seattle was quickly confirmed by Hansen in a public statement on his SonicsArena.com website : In an effort to further demonstrate the extent of our commitment to bring basketball back to Seattle, we have elected to voluntarily increase our proposed purchase price for the Sacramento Kings NBA Franchise by $75 million — from an enterprise value of $550 million to $625 million. In conjunction with our revised offer, we have also guaranteed to the NBA that the Franchise would be a revenue sharing payer in all years in Seattle. [...] While we appreciate that this is a very difficult decision for the league and owners, we hope it is understood that we really believe the time is now to bring the NBA back to Seattle, and that it is paramount that we do everything we can to put Seattle’s best foot forward in this process.

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