THE STORY SO FAR
Sept. 8, 2014: Hawks lead owner Bruce Levenson announces he will sell his stake in the franchise after disclosure of racially offensive remarks he made in an internal email.
January 8, 2015: The Hawks confirm that all members of the team's ownership group, formerly known as Atlanta Spirit, have approved a plan to sell the franchise and the Philips Arena operating rights. Sale efforts officially begin.
April 22, 2015: The Hawks announce that an agreement has been reached to sell the team and the arena rights to a group led by Tony Ressler, co-founder of Los Angeles-based asset management firm Ares Management. The deal is subject to NBA approval.
Currently: The extensive NBA approval process continues.
As the Hawks prepare to play in the Eastern Conference finals, the team’s prospective new owners continue to move toward gaining NBA approval of their purchase.
The league’s extensive approval process is “moving along appropriately” and is expected to be completed within the next four to six weeks, a person familiar with the situation told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
Under that timeline, the new owners could be in charge of the Hawks by the end of June.
A group led by Los Angeles-based billionaire Tony Ressler reached an agreement last month to buy the Hawks and the Philips Arena operating rights for about $730 million. The deal is contingent on approval by the NBA, which will vet all aspects of the transaction before submitting it to the league’s Board of Governors for a vote. Approval by 75 percent of the board, which consists of one representative of the ownership of each of the 30 teams, is required.
The board can vote by conference call, rather than waiting until its next in-person meeting in mid-July, according to the person familiar with the situation.
The Hawks announced on April 22 a deal for the team’s current ownership group, headed by Bruce Levenson, to sell the franchise and the arena rights to the group led by Ressler, co-founder and chief executive of asset management firm Ares Management.
Ressler’s group includes former NBA star Grant Hill; Richard Schnall, a partner at private-equity investment firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice; Sara Blakely, founder of Atlanta-based undergarment company Spanx; and Marquis Jets co-founder Jesse Itzler, who is Blakely’s husband.
NBA rules prohibit the prospective owners from commenting publicly on the matter until the transaction is approved. An NBA spokesman would say only that “the approval process is in progress.”
A 2011 agreement to sell the Hawks to Los Angeles businessman Alex Meruelo collapsed three months into the approval process for economic reasons.
Typically, the approval process includes a meeting between the buyer(s) and a committee of league owners and the signing of an “undertaking agreement” that spells out the new owner’s commitments and obligations to the league. Also, final contracts between the buyers and sellers must be drafted and executed.
Although far less than the $2 billion that the Los Angeles Clippers sold for last year, the Hawks’ sale price is the second highest in NBA history. That is largely attributable to the league’s lucrative new national TV deals and the growing potential of international media and sponsorship deals, experts said.
“The reason this (team) would sell for, say, a quarter billion dollars more than it otherwise would is because you own 1/30th of the NBA and the NBA is such a strong business right now,” Chicago-based sports business consultant Marc Ganis told the AJC last month.
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