The Atlanta Hawks reportedly have been sold to a group led by billionaire Tony Ressler and former NBA star Grant Hill.
The sales price is about $850 million, including $107 million in debt for Philips Arena, according to Yahoo Sports. The price of the team alone was $750 million, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ressler, 55, is co-founder of two private equity firms and also is a minority owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. According to Forbes, he has a net worth of $1.43 billion.
Ressler was part of a group that tried to buy the Los Angeles Clippers in the wake of the forced sale by banned owner Donald Sterling. Ressler’s group reportedly bid $1.2 billion but lost out to Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion offer.
Ressler’s ownership team in Atlanta includes Hill, a seven-time All-Star who retired in 2013; Marquis Jet co-founder of Jesse Itzler and wife Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanxx.
Michael Gearon Jr. will retain a percentage of the franchise. Gearon was part of a three-city ownership group led by Bruce Levenson, who announced the sale of his Washington group’s stake in September after he was called out for an email that was racially insensitive to the Hawks’ fan base.
Levenson’s group owned 50.1 percent of the team, Gearon’s Atlanta-based group owned 32.3 percent and a New York group owned the rest.