The Brooklyn Nets were Sold but Not Really

Alibaba co-founder spends over a billion dollars for a minority stake in the Brooklyn Nets

In this Friday edition of Rich People Buy Expensive Things, Joseph Tsai, the co-founder and executive vice chairman of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company that is a mix between Amazon and eBay.

one of the most powerful men in the world, and Mikhail Prokhorov

The Nets current majority stakeholder in the team, fellow billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, bought 80% of the team back in 2010 for $200 million and is now selling 49% to Tsai at a current valuation of the team of $2.3 billion (with a B). That means that the team went from being worth $250 million at Prokhorov’s time of purchase to $2.3 billion — a 920% increase in value. 49% of 2.3 billion is roughly equal to $1.13 billion dollars — a pretty penny, even for someone of Prokhorov’s wealth.

The NBA is the hottest league in the world right now, and the one where all the new-money tech guys are interested in buying in and are actually able to (most NFL and MLB teams are owned by old-money families that have been reluctant to sell in recent years).

While the Nets have been mostly terrible since the Russian oligarch took over (just two winning seasons in seven years), he did show good business acumen in understanding the timing of his purchase. With the league continuing to expand internationally, and Brooklyn being in the NYC market, Tsai must believe that he is getting a great deal here.