Sacramento group finalizes its bid to keep the Kings

Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

The group of investors hoping to buy the Kings and keep them from being moved to Seattle have agreed on a deal with the city of Sacramento for a new bid that will be submitted to the NBA at an April 3 meeting in New York.

The agreement was announced via Twitter by Sacramento mayor and former NBA point guard Kevin Johnson on Saturday night. The group of private investors includes the lead money man on the team side, Golden State Warriors minority owner Vivek Ranadive, as well as 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov and Ron Burkle, the supermarket mogul and part owner of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins who is the lead investor on a new downtown Sacramento arena plan that is considered a prerequisite to the team having any chance of staying put.

A person with knowledge of the situation revealed details of the deal. The person spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been announced.

Between the proposed purchase of the team, the investment in the downtown plaza arena and related real estate development around the site, Ranadive, Mastrov and Burkle will be investing nearly a billion dollars. While the specific figure of the offer for the team is not yet known, $190 million of the investment is in the arena. That sum is $58 million more than the $132 million put forth by the NBA and the Maloof family that owns the team in a 2012 arena deal that would have put the arena in the city's railyards but fell apart when the Maloofs were no longer comfortable with the handshake agreement.

As was the case in that arrangement, the city of Sacramento will contribute $258 million from revenues raised through the sale of city parking structures and land to private parties and ticket surcharges. The person said the city's general fund would be protected and no new taxes would be involved.

The Seattle group led by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and hedge fund manager Chris Hansen has an agreement in place to buy 65% of the team from the Maloofs for a valuation of $525 million. NBA Commissioner David Stern said recently that Sacramento's first bid, which previously did not include Ranadive, fell well short of being competitive enough to be considered by the league's Board of Governors. The person with knowledge of the deal would not disclose the size of the updated offer, but indicated that the addition of Ranadive to the group was a sign that their pursuit should be taken even more seriously than before and that the offer would likely meet Stern's perceived expectations.

For the Sacramento leaders who don't want to lose the team that has been there since 1985, the recent addition of Ranadive to the investment group was the sort infusion of cash that was needed at the 11th hour of this process. If the group that includes Ranadive were able to buy the Kings, the founder of the San Francisco Bay Area-based, $4 billion software company, Tibco, would have to sell his share of the Warriors. The agreement came after the investors negotiated extensively with Johnson for the last two days.