OK neither the city nor state governments want to pay to keep the Sonics in
Seattle, fair enough..
Why not set up a fan cor****ation, like the one in Green Bay for the NFL,
initially make it closed, so as to protect the investments of those who
start the ball rolling, say $1000 per share. Once there have been 400mil+
raised in share sales (not as tough as you might think) have the state
expropriate the team, for 367million bucks (representing current
owner****p's
investment and stated losses) and tender it to the cor****ation for the
same
price. The cor****ation then goes public with A and B shares, the A shares
are tendered based on the original amounts tendered by those who formed
the
cor****ation and are non-salable except back to the cor****ation at their
original value. The B shares go public. After some number of years, I am
thinking 5, the A shares are redeemed for an appropriate number of B
shares
and retired.
In the interim the sale of the B shares pays for a better venue, OR goes
towards making Seattle Center the most basketball friendly venue in the
NBA.
as stockholder driven cor****ation, there isn't the drive to make a billion
bucks a year with this thing and it would be really tough for any one
entity
to acquire the franchise (or enough of it to take it private again)
It leaves Seattle with an NBA franchise, which hopefully can play
successfully for many many generations...
just my $.02 cents (Canadian)
(and yeah I was a Vancouver Grizzlies Fan, so I know exactly what you guys
are going through)
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