00:00Bids are coming in for an NBA expansion team in Las Vegas, and the first bids to purchase the Seattle
00:05Seahawks are due on Monday, or were due on Monday, rather.
00:08Bloomberg senior reporter Randall Williams has been covering both of those. He joins Scarlett and myself now.
00:13Do we know anything about how the bidding process so far has been going for the Seahawks?
00:17Sure. So the Seahawks, they hired an investment bank, Allen & Co., who canvassed the landscape trying to figure out
00:22who wants to buy the team.
00:23I mean, there have been many rumors. We know that Aditi Middle is leading a bid. We know that Vinod
00:28Khosla is another person leading a bid.
00:30There could be others that show up. We don't know those other potential parties, but the two we know are
00:35Vinod Khosla and Aditi Middle, who's backed also by Wick Grusbeck, who used to own the Celtics.
00:40There are also reports that demand perhaps is not as strong as people thought it might be.
00:44You're going to get Roger Goodell fired up.
00:46I just wonder, because this is an NFL franchise, there's scarcity value, right? All of that.
00:50Sure. So when you have to buy an NFL team, you have to offer up 30 percent equity up front.
00:56And that's a lot of money for a team that could go from anywhere to eight to ten billion dollars.
01:00That could be two and a half to three billion dollars.
01:02And so there's not a lot of people in the world who can just write a two to three billion
01:06dollar check in cash.
01:07Now, these two parties that are interested that have been confirmed, they can.
01:11But in terms of the interest that was there for the commanders or for the Broncos, I have not seen
01:15that.
01:16Now, Roger Goodell said at the NFL league meeting that there has been tremendous amount of interest.
01:20So we'll see.
01:21I guess interest can be subjective.
01:24What about interest for an NBA expansion team in Las Vegas?
01:28There was some reporting around like maybe one of the Kushner brothers, Bob Iger, being interested in that.
01:34Sure. So one of the Kushner brothers, he has long been interested in Las Vegas.
01:39He reported that or we reported earlier this week that he is considering submitting a bid.
01:44Now, bids for the Las Vegas and Seattle NBA expansion teams aren't due.
01:48So it's a bunch of people that are raising their hand and saying we are absolutely interested.
01:52Outside of him, there's Bill Foley, who owns the Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL.
01:56Magic Johnson has raised his hand.
01:57Mark Lassery.
01:58And in Seattle, there is Samantha Holloway, who, of course, is the daughter of the late David Bonderman.
02:03And so there are a lot of people who are interested in owning these expansion teams because there are two
02:07markets that I think are appetizing.
02:09Vegas, you're not going to have any trouble selling luxury suites there.
02:12And Seattle has been deprived of basketball for many, many years.
02:16So whoever wins this is, I think, going to be a huge, huge winner.
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