All of Atlanta Hawks’ owners agree to put team up for sale

A 100 percent stake in the Atlanta Hawks will go on the market next week, according to a report, three months after a racially-charged email from a co-owner went public.

According to a report, the Atlanta Hawks are for sale.

By that we mean the entire franchise, not just a controlling interest.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the three ownership groups have reached agreements between each other to sell their stakes in the franchise in their entirety.

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The club has been working toward getting itself on the market since September, when co-owner Bruce Levenson self-reported a racially-charged email from 2012 to the NBA office.

Levenson’s Washington-based group owns 50.1 percent of the team, but there are now agreements with an Atlanta-based group that owns 32.3 percent of the franchise and a group in New York that has 17.6 percent of the club to be included in a potential sale.

According to the report, Goldman Sachs and Inner Circle Sports will handle the sale process and can begin recruiting and vetting potential buyers.

Estimates set the value of the franchise at more than $600 million. Two teams sold in 2014 set new records for NBA franchise sales prices—the Milwaukee Bucks were sold for $550 million last spring before Steve Ballmer blew the lid off the market with his $2 billion foray for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Getting the entire stake in the franchise on the market was a big deal for the NBA, which believed that would be in the best interests of both the team and the Atlanta market—at least the portion of the Atlanta market that realizes the city does, in fact, have an NBA franchise.

Part of whatever price is paid will include the remaining $124 million owed on Philips Arena.

The sale talk started in September when Levenson sent an email he wrote in 2012 to the NBA during an investigation into a racially insensitive remark about free-agent Luol Deng in a June conference call.

In his email, Levenson wrote about the Hawks’ poor attendance.

“My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant (sic) season ticket base.”

That came on the heels of the Donald Sterling nightmare in Los Angeles that led to the sale of the Clippers to Ballmer for Dr. Evil-type money.

The Hawks have been in Atlanta since 1968, when they moved from St. Louis. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed has said several people have expressed interest in buying the team and it is unlikely it would be moved from its current location, as the NBA would be loathe to love a top-10 television market with its new TV rights deal not even taking effect until 2016.

But the Hawks—despite being near the top of the Eastern Conference at 23-8 this season—are 24th in the NBA in attendance at 16,015 per game through 17 home dates—just 85.5 percent of capacity.

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