Who Will Buy The Los Angeles Clippers?
By Jason Gold
Casey Wasserman and Arn Tellem of WMG
7. The Unknown Groups
Like we mentioned earlier, there will no shortage of billionaires and sports insiders that will put together bids for the Clippers. When the Dodgers were up for sale, there were nine groups who put together legitimate bids for the team. We should expect that the NBA will receive at least a dozen offers for the Clippers and there very well may be more groups than that.
Sports insiders like Arn Tellem, the NBA and MLB super agent who currently works for Wasserman Media Group, is likely to attempt to put together a group and make a significant offer for the Clippers. It would not be shocking if Tellem paired up with one of the billionaires that we have previously mentioned, most likely Cohen or Soon-Shiong. Tellem worked with Cohen in his bid to acquire the Dodgers in 2012. Tellem is a respected agent in the NBA and is very well known around the league. Heck, Casey Wasserman, the owner of WMG, may be in that group as well.
Other agents from Creative Artists Agency will likely get involved as well. Other Los Angeles billionaires, such as Eli Broad, Sumner Redstone of Viacom, Donald Bren, David Murdock, Michael Milken, Tom Gores (if he sells the Detroit Pistons), Charles Munger, or maybe even Steven Spielberg could potentially get involved as the majority backers of a group.
Or, we may have a foreign buyer on our hands. The wealthiest person in the world, Carlos Slim Helu, from Mexico, has more than enough money to outbid every single person on this list. Would he get involved in American sports? Who knows, the possibilties are endless.
What we do know is this: the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers will set a new record for the NBA and it may be the most sought after sports franchise in the entire world right now. There’s going to be a ton of speculation and even more offers.
As long as Donald Sterling is no longer the owner of the Clippers, we’ll consider it a win for the NBA, the city of Los Angeles, and the Clippers franchise.