Back in 2002, Worcester native Wyc Grousbeck, his father, and a group of investors formed Boston Basketball Partners, LLC. They got $360 million together and purchased the Boston Celtics.
The resulting 14 years have been fruitful for Boston. They’ve won a title, made a few runs at another, and they’re currently in a rebuild that’s generated some excitement amongst the fans who see a very possible return to prominence in the next couple of years.
Today, the NBA announced that Celtics merchandise is still in the top 10 (#9, to be exact) in sales and the TD Garden is generally full, even when the team is scuffling. The Celtics fan base spans the globe, with an interest high enough to not only support the attention it gets from the mainstream, but also a robust fan-based community of multiple blogs (including us!), podcasts, and other internet outlets.
This is all to say the Celtics are quite popular. And that popularity is translating into big profits for the folks at Boston Basketball Partners, LLC. That’s because Forbes, in its latest rankings of most valuable NBA franchises, ranked the Celtics fourth, at a valuation of $2.1 BILLION dollars.
The Celtics are still among the most profitable teams in the NBA. The team pays no rent at TD Garden and pulls in over $60 million a year in local television revenue, including its equity stake in Comcast SportsNet New England.
The value of the team jumped 24% from last year, and will very likely continue to jump as the team continues to get better. For the record, the Knicks, Lakers, and Bulls were ahead of Boston. The average NBA team is worth $1.25 billion now. The least valuable team, by the way, is New Orleans, worth a paltry $650 million… or basically a third of Boston.
When mentioning these astronomical values, it’s worth wondering what they would have been had Steve Ballmer NOT paid $2 billion for the Clippers in the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal. That was a black eye for the NBA, for sure, but man did it make all these owners rich.
Of course, this windfall for the Celtics owners is really only tangible if they sell. They had overtures a couple of years ago but don’t seem inclined to get rid of the team. On a fan level, selling the franchise would be a gut-punch because great ownership is a key to success… and these guys have been great owners. They’ve allowed Danny Ainge to make unpopular moves like trading Paul Pierce because they realize the greater good… as opposed to the Lakers putting their rebuild on pause just to make Kobe Bryant happy.
But who could blame anyone from cashing in on an investment that’s quadrupled like this? Maybe they won’t now… maybe they’d wait until the next championship to see if they could cross the $3 billion mark like the Knicks. Or maybe they just never will. Regardless, they’re sitting pretty right now, and it should only get better from here.
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