guess what Ballmer bought

[maco]

The sidelines at future Clippers games.

http://youtu.be/edN4o8F9_P4

[vision63]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=vision63]
[quote=pRICE cUBE]
Ballmer saying he does not intend to move the team is just as trustworthy as the guy from Oklamhoma City that bought the Sonics and said he would keep the team in Seattle.

It's not a 2 Billion dollar team in Seattle.
The Clippers, long a laughing stock in the league and generally only accidentally competitive, that doesn't even own their own stadium is worth $2 billion? He should have bought the Sonics and kept them in Seattle. He probably could have paid $350 million and put another $500 million in a stadium and still come out ahead. I don't get. The Clippers have a nice core now and there was a feeding frenzy because the rest of the world finally realized what people who follow basketball already knew about Donald Sterling, but this is just stupid expensive.
They're worth more than 2 Billion (I predicted 2 + billion as soon as Sterling was banned). The NBA TV agreement is ending after 2015 (I believe) The new one will easily be triple the existing agreements. The NBA has become the most popular sport in the world. It's rare when a franchise is available (just 30 of 'em for x amount of billionaires). It's also in Los Angeles.

The NBA is becoming the most popular league and sport in the history of the earth.

Why soccer should fear the NBA
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/footba...ear.world/

NBA's popularity spanning the globe with digital reach
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/r...876679.php

[Lemon Drop]

RgrF wrote:
So instead of putting their vast resources to work in innovation or philanthropy (ala Gates) two former Microsoft top executives now or will soon own the LA Clippers, Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Seahawks.

What an inspiration they are.

Yes, they are an inspiration. The nonprofit I work for just got a check for $200K from the Paul Allen Family Foundation and the Seahawks have been very generous to us as well.
maybe it's because you're not from Seattle that you're completely unaware of how generous Ballmer and Allen are, and the phenomenal impact they have.
The Gates' are heavily involved in for profit enterprises as well, just FYI....
Look for Steve and Connie Ballmer to launch their own foundation in the near future. They already launched a $10 million effort to help foster kids, they're just getting started now that he's stepped down from Microsoft.


http://www.pgafamilyfoundation.org/

[silvarios]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=RgrF]
So instead of putting their vast resources to work in innovation or philanthropy (ala Gates) two former Microsoft top executives now or will soon own the LA Clippers, Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Seahawks.

What an inspiration they are.

Yes, they are an inspiration. The nonprofit I work for just got a check for $200K from the Paul Allen Family Foundation and the Seahawks have been very generous to us as well.
maybe it's because you're not from Seattle that you're completely unaware of how generous Ballmer and Allen are, and the phenomenal impact they have.
The Gates' are heavily involved in for profit enterprises as well, just FYI....
$200K? Not hard to do when the taxpayers footed $390 million for billionaire Paul Allen's sports stadium.

[Lemon Drop]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=Lemon Drop]
[quote=RgrF]
So instead of putting their vast resources to work in innovation or philanthropy (ala Gates) two former Microsoft top executives now or will soon own the LA Clippers, Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Seahawks.

What an inspiration they are.

Yes, they are an inspiration. The nonprofit I work for just got a check for $200K from the Paul Allen Family Foundation and the Seahawks have been very generous to us as well.
maybe it's because you're not from Seattle that you're completely unaware of how generous Ballmer and Allen are, and the phenomenal impact they have.
The Gates' are heavily involved in for profit enterprises as well, just FYI....
$200K? Not hard to do when the taxpayers footed $390 million for billionaire Paul Allen's sports stadium.
comments like that just make you sound uninformed about Allen's philanthropy.
publicly funded stadiums and private philanthropy are different things.
The existence of one doesn't trump the power of the other.

[Lemon Drop]

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/110056...s-clippers

anyway here's the story on Ballmer's recent efforts to buy a team, some of which have not been public before

I don't see the Clippers coming to Seattle, and this move by Ballmer is a blow to Seattle's efforts to get a team, because Chris Hansen just lost one of his major partners.

[silvarios]

Lemon Drop wrote:
comments like that just make you sound uninformed about Allen's philanthropy.
publicly funded stadiums and private philanthropy are different things.
The existence of one doesn't trump the power of the other.

I disagree. Art Modell here in Baltimore got a bunch of public money for the Ravens and then was lauded as a great philanthropist. But if you look at his publicly known donations and compare it to the tax payer money funneled into his team, there seemed to be more money coming from the people to the team than vice versa. My concern is that maybe communities should take hundreds of millions of dollars and pour them into the community and see if that offsets the philanthropy of any specific billionaire team owner.

Not going to knock someone truly striving to do good, but it sure is easier to give a fraction of the money back that is coming to you. Paul Allen may not be the best example. Hypothetically, let's say a wealthy patron donates $5 million per year to the community. In 40 years he would have given $200 million dollars away. On the flip side any publicly funded stadium will have cost two or more times as much. Then we have to examine any employment and tax benefits from the stadium versus the same if the tax money had simply been invested into the community.

Last time I read a steady about such public sports investments, it tended to have a negative effect. However, I would to see more data points.

[Lemon Drop]

I'm not a fan of publicly funded stadiums whose primary function is playing field for privately owned professional teams. I've said that before here. I've also seen the evidence to suggest they don't earn money for the cities that finance them.

Men who loved sports as kids but weren't particularly good athletes seem particularly obsessed with this "owning" the team idea. Ballmer was football team manager at Harvard, he's always loved sports and it's been his dream to own a professional team. Men and their toys.

That system is what it is. Fight it politically if you don't like it.

But it doesn't make the philanthropy illegitimate or unimportant. Allen and Ballmer would give money away whether they owned teams or not.

[Dennis S]

Can he (or anyone) make a return on investment cash flow to justify that? I'm thinking that's the new status symbol for the insanely rich.

[Lemon Drop]

Well Sterling bought the Clippers 33 years ago for $12.5 million, so he's getting an annualized return of 16.6% by unloading the team now for $2 billion. So not bad. Not as well as Ballmer has done on Microsoft, mind you, but not bad.