Two billion dollars. Want to see the zeroes? $2,000,000,000.
That is what the Los Angeles Clippers will be sold for, unless Donald Sterling can somehow prevent it.
This is just nuts.
The value of every NBA single franchise probably doubled, or even, tripled, on Thursday as former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer won the bidding war for the Clippers with an offer nearly four times larger than the recent sale price of the Milwaukee Bucks.
How much is $2 billion? If you take that $100,000 bill pictured above and made a stack of 10,000 of them, you’d be halfway there. If you made your stack out of Benjamins ($100 bills), which is the largest denomination of U.S. currency in circulation, you would need 200 million of them.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Ballmer’s bid defeated bids of $1.6 billion by a group led by David Beckham and $1.2 billion by L.A. based investors Tony Ressler and Bruce Karsh.
What remains to be determined is the process by which the sale will go down. NBA owners are scheduled to vote June 3 to strip Sterling of his ownership, but Sterling could still take the matter to court and try to obtain an injunction halting the process. After saying earlier this week that he would agree to sell the team, Sterling reversed course Wednesday and said he would fight the NBA.
More from the L.A. Times story by James Rainey: “The sale price is almost four times the highest previous NBA franchise sale price — the $550 million paid earlier this month for the Milwaukee Bucks. It is second only to the Dodgers’ 2012 sale for $2.1 billion as the highest price for any sports team in North America. The prospective sale by Clippers co-owner Shelly Sterling comes five days ahead of an NBA hearing to oust her family from ownership following a controversy in which Donald Sterling insulted African-Americans in a secret audio recording. The tentative deal still must receive the blessing of her husband, Donald Sterling, who has waxed and waned on the question of whether he would allow his wife to sell the team he has controlled for more than three decades. The deal also needs the eventual approval of 29 other NBA owners, but is expected to clear that hurdle as long as Ballmer reaffirms his pledge to keep the team in Los Angeles and not move it to Seattle, where he lives.”
No word yet on whether Ballmer is paying cash.
If he did, he’d need twice as much money as shown in the illustration below of pallets stacked with $100 bills.
Donald Sterling really doesn’t want to fight. People should know its all a smart tactic. He was already ruled mentally incapacitated, per Shelly’s attorneys. That is actually a brilliant medical finding, since how can you demonize the mentally ill? (I doubt they were thinking about that at the time, but rather as a way to get deal to NBA without Donald’s approval).
I saw the entire Blecher interview with Wolf Blitzer (on CNN 6:20-7PM 5/29). All he wants is to sit down with NBA and have a discussion and resolution, without any Vote against him on Tuesday.
Then he will give his blessing on deal and Go Away. No litigation.
He doesn’t want word “Racist” on his Tombstone, so NBA shouldn’t even bring up subject again, which they can do. He just wants history to say that he voluntarily sold the team, even though you can never take back the events that led to the sale.
They can agree to have 2.5 million fine (due June 13), paid to Charity of his choice.
After the sale he can Donate another $50 million to charity.
There should be no problem accommodating Blecher’s wishes if Silver/NBA can do it in a way that doesn’t spark much backlash from the media or players. We’ve always heard it said that they just want Donald to “go away”.
What was not mentioned is that Ballmer was bidding against himself. His 1st bid was supposed to be for 1.8 B, already the highest bid. Shelly wanted a reach 2 in front and got him to fork up another 200 million.
Shelly also get Ballmer to commit to keeping team in LA. This would not have happened this way, had the NBA handled the sale.
Its so much better for the Clippers fans to have a single, wealthy, enthusiastic owner (Prokhorov of Brooklyn Nets), than group of owners, all with their own egos.
200 million one hundred dollar bills is actually 20 billion and not 2 billion.
Everyone should review Scientific Notation: 200×10^6 x 100×10^0 = 2×10^8 x 1×10^2 = 2×10^10 or 20×10^9 = 20 billion.
Or you could just do $200,000,000 x 100 on a calculator and you would get $20,000,000,000. Seems easier
Your brain will turn to jelly before you are 30 years old, if you keep doing that.
Besides, you must have a very good calculator to have that many digits. Mine doesn’t.
When I was in college, I had one Chemistry Professor who made us use a slide rule on a quantitative analysis exam.
Back then I had a genuine Texas Instruments SR10 calculator, which I wasn’t allowed to use.