Microsoft billionaires can buy almost anything they want. And being too smart to buy Twitter, a couple of them have chosen professional basketball teams to purchase. The late Paul Allen, who co-founded the software giant with Bill Gates, owned the Portland Trail Blazers (as well as the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks).
More recently, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer purchased the LA Clippers in 2014 for an stunning $2 billion.
Ballmer was the 30th employee hired at Microsoft and has a current estimated net worth of more than $100 billion, so he was hardly risking his fortune at that price. The stunning part was that at the time the Clippers price tag represented the second largest pile of money ever turned over for an American sports franchise, with the nearby Los Angeles Dodgers being the only team ever to have sold for more — at $2.15 billion.
Adding to the sticker shock, historically the Clippers hadn’t even been the best or most popular team in their own city, that title belonging the Los Angeles Lakers.
Many shook their heads at Ballmer’s seemingly extravagant purchase. (Probably the same way people shook their heads back when Ballmer dropped out of Stanford Business School to help run a little software startup in Redmond.)
A similar NBA situation, which may give Ballmer a sense of deja vu, is playing itself out again today almost a decade later as the Phoenix Suns are about to change owners.
In 2014, the Clippers became available after their longtime owner Donald Sterling was credibly accused of racist behavior and the NBA took action, essentially forcing a sale.
Today the Phoenix Suns seem poised to be sold to a new owner, Mat Ishbia, a mortgage business billionaire who played college basketball at Michigan State. The Suns are for sale after pressure from the NBA forced current owner Robert Sarver to give up his ownership of both the Suns and the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA. (Sarver was accused of fostering a hostile workplace environment.)
Breaking: Billionaire mortgage lender Mat Ishbia is finalizing a purchase of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, sources told @wojespn.
— ESPN (@espn) December 20, 2022
The deal, expected to be completed in the near future, would end the tumultuous tenure of owner Robert Sarver.
More: https://t.co/3ALhj2qWtd pic.twitter.com/PRz1bgafTx
Ishbia is reportedly about to pay $4 billion for the franchises, the same amount that Ballmer’s Clippers are reportedly worth today — double what he paid for them. That’s not bad. Doubling your money is nice work and especially if you can have as much fun as Ballmer has along the way.
But if Ballmer had just bought more Microsoft stock the day he was replaced in 2014 by Satya Nadella, he’d have made about an 8x return. Even the emotionally imperturbable Clippers star Kawhi Leonard is presumably impressed by that.
