A sports investment firm recently acquired by the asset management behemoth KKR has muscled its way into the launch of the NBA’s European tournament by tabling bids for stakes in a string of city-based franchises.
meziesblog understands that Arctos Partners, which was sold to KKR for $1.4bn, submitted offers to become a shareholder in several of the teams expected to participate in NBA Europe when it launches next year.
Sources said Arctos had expressed an interest in the Berlin and Paris franchises, along with several others.
The initial bid deadline of the end of March drew interest from football clubs, wealthy families and media groups from around the world, with the NBA hopeful of attracting $1bn or more for the leading franchises.
In addition to London, Paris and Berlin, the other cities due to host teams include Manchester, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Munich.
Under NBA ownership rules, passive investors can own stakes in more than one US team, with Arctos now owning an interest in six of the league’s competitors.
One sports industry source said they expected Arctos to end up holding stakes in a number of the NBA Europe outfits.
Sky News revealed at the weekend that Liberty Global, the owner of Formula E motor racing, had submitted an offer for the London franchise, which is understood to have attracted multiple bids worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Owners of some of the continent’s biggest football clubs are among those to have expressed an interest, including RedBird Capital Partners, the owner of AC Milan, which wants to own the NBA Europe team in the Italian city, and Qatar Sports Investments, owner of the French Ligue 1 side Paris Saint-Germain, which has expressed interest in the French capital’s NBA Europe team.
Sources said interested parties would meet NBA officials in the coming weeks, with preferred bidders being announced in waves, rather than all 10-12 simultaneously.
“We have received significant interest from a range of prospective teams and investors for permanent franchise spots in a new league in Europe backed by the NBA and FIBA,” Mark Tatum, NBA deputy commissioner, said in a statement last week.
“The level of engagement and the scale of the bids reflect the marketplace’s belief in our proposed model and the enormous, untapped potential for European basketball.”
However, some prospective investors have begun to express reservations about the proposed revenue and costs model associated with the new league.
One said the NBA’s plan to retain more than half of the league’s central revenues, combined with uncertainty about the robustness of media rights forecasts, had made some bidders anxious about overpaying.
A spokesman for Arctos declined to comment.
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