FOR all Donald Sterling’s well-known faults—the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team seems to have comfortably secured a role as the face of racism in America—no one has ever accused him of being a bad businessman. Although most of his fortune came from real estate, he is now on the brink of closing out what is probably the most profitable investment in the history of professional sports. The other 29 team owners of the National Basketball Association (NBA) are set to hold a vote on June 3rd to terminate his control of the Clippers, in response to a tape of his offensive remarks about blacks that was leaked to the media. But the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, had let it be known that he would prefer a voluntary sale to happen first—managed by Mr Sterling’s estranged wife Rochelle, since Mr Silver had already banned Mr Sterling for life and thus prevented him from exercising control over the team. On May 29th the commissioner’s wish was granted, when Ms Sterling announced that Steve Ballmer (pictured at left), the former head of Microsoft, had agreed to buy the Clippers for the eye-popping sum of $2 billion. Although the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team went for a slightly higher $2.15 billion in 2012, that deal included valuable real-estate assets as well, whereas the Clippers are essentially being sold on their own. The previous record price for an NBA club was just $550m, set by the Milwaukee Bucks earlier this year, and Forbes magazine valued the Clippers at a mere $575m in January. Mr Ballmer’s bid comfortably exceeded the reported $1.6 billion offered by a group led by David Geffen, a media executive.

Mr Sterling has not yet announced whether he will try to block the sale. Since he bought the team for a piddling $12.5m in 1981 and lives in the high-tax state of California, the deal would cost him an estimated $662m in capital-gains taxes. Moreover, his lawyer has demanded that the league retract its accusations against Mr Sterling, though an after-tax profit of $1.326 billion might help him to swallow his pride. It is not yet clear whether Mr Sterling could hold up the deal if he wants to. His representatives insist that no sale can proceed without his signature. But the family trust that formally owns the club has declared the 80-year-old Mr Sterling mentally incapacitated—an opinion shared by many viewers of his ill-advised interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN—in order to give his wife sole authority over the franchise. Mr Sterling has a well-earned reputation for litigiousness, and would surely challenge any sale by Ms Sterling against his will in court. However, that would cause the league to re-initiate termination proceedings against him.

The NBA will also still have to approve Mr Ballmer, but that is expected to be a mere formality. Paul Allen, another Microsoft billionaire, already owns the Portland Trail Blazers, and the league vetted Mr Ballmer when he made a failed bid for the Sacramento Kings. Mr Silver will be eager to remove a pariah from the league as quickly and quietly as possible, and to avoid the prospect of a long court battle with Mr Sterling. And the commissioner surely wants to lock in the lofty sale price, which sets a new valuation bar for every other franchise.

Mr Ballmer is yet to speak publicly about his financial calculus, except to assure the NBA that he would not seek to move the Clippers to Seattle, as he hoped to do with the Kings. (He told the Wall Street Journal that relocating the club out of America’s second-biggest market would be “value destructive”.) Microsoft shareholders who despaired at his string of high-priced acquisitions for the company can at least take solace that he is no thriftier with his own money: the Clippers will cost an estimated 10% of his net worth.

To be sure, there are strong arguments for a ten-figure price for the team. Sports franchise values have been soaring in recent years, thanks to record-setting rights deals from television networks desperate for DVR-proof programming. Both the NBA’s national contract and the Clippers’ local one are set to expire in the coming years, leaving the team doubly well-positioned to cash in. And following an acrimonious lockout in 2011, the league’s current collective-bargaining agreement sharply cut the share of its revenues that gets paid out in salaries, which made clubs far more profitable. Low interest rates are driving up prices for all assets, and the combination of rising inequality and greater international interest in basketball has increased the number of billionaires willing to splurge on an NBA team.

Moreover, the Clippers currently find themselves in an unfamiliar spot as the best basketball team in Los Angeles, and indeed all of California. The Lakers, their far better-loved crosstown rivals, are suffering through a difficult rebuilding phase, whereas the Clippers finished with the league’s third-best record this year. No one would blink an eye if the Lakers sold for $2 billion, and in theory there’s no reason why the team’s electrifying “Lob City” offence featuring Chris Paul and Blake Griffin could not supplant the slumping Lakers for Angelenos’ affections.

On the other hand, brand loyalty matters as much or more in sports as the on-field product. In 2009 the Chicago Cubs, baseball’s iconic lovable losers, sold for $845m despite putrid overall economic conditions, because they were the more popular club in a big two-team market. As measured by Facebook likes, there is not a single postal code in which the Clippers are even one-fifth as popular as the Lakers, and the Lakers are the preferred club in pretty much every part of the United States that lacks a nearby team save the Southeast. The Lakers’ local television deal pays them $180m a year; the Clippers are expected to fetch 60% less for their next contract. Mr Sterling’s 33 years of penny-pinching mismanagement have left a stain on the franchise that no number of Paul-to-Griffin windmill alley-oops can erase. When Jack Nicholson attends a Clippers game, it’s news; when he goes to see the Lakers, it’s just normal.

The great unknown is whether the going rate for televised sports rates is sustainable. Cable carriers like Time Warner have already begun offering cheaper packages that exclude expensive sports channels, and John McCain, a senator from Arizona and former presidential candidate, has introduced a bill that would “unbundle” cable television and let viewers choose the channels they want a la carte. Both approaches would reduce the “sports tax” that non-fans currently pay to subsidise fans via their cable bills. Technological advances or piracy could also disrupt the current lucrative delivery model, as they have with so many other types of media.

Buying a team for a billion or two is essentially a bet on the sports-media status quo continuing for at least another decade. It may well be a bubble. But it has already lasted for far longer than the naysayers ever thought possible.