Everton owners had been in the running to acquire the Boston Celtics NBA franchise
Everton owners, The Friedkin Group, won’t be acquiring the Boston Celtics basketball team. TFG had been one of the four bidders for the NBA franchise.
TFG, who acquired the Blues back in December from Farhad Moshiri and recently restructured the club’s £350million stadium debt to ease the club’s financial issues that had been mounting under previous ownership, had been among the final bidders aiming to take a majority stake in the current NBA champions.
The Celtics had been valued around $6billion (£4.6billion) by Forbes recently, and a sale has, according to multiple reports in the US, been concluded at a $6.1billion (£4.7billion) valuation to William Chisholm, managing director and co-founder of Symphony Technology Group, a Massachusetts native and life-long fan of the Celtics.
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TFG, along with Philadelphia Phillies owner Stan Middleman, successful bidder Chisholm, and Steve Pagliuca, currently a minority shareholder in the Celtics and also the owner of Italian club Atalanta, were the quartet of would-be owners to be still in the race as of late last week, with last Friday set as the deadline for final bids to be presented to Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, who is to remain as governor of the team throughout the ownership transition.
The sale of the Celtics represents the largest sum paid for a sports team in history, higher than the $6.05billion that was paid for the Washington Commanders NFL team in 2023 by Josh Harris, part owner of Crystal Palace.
TFG, a company with $13billion in annual revenue across its business portfolio, doesn’t have any North American sporting assets, with its sporting interests lying with Everton and the majority stake it holds in Italian Serie A giants AS Roma.
Having shown their hand in the Celtics bidding process they will likely crop up among the interested parties when other major league US sporting franchises come up for sale in the next 12 to 18 months.
