Deep dive insiders info on the sale by SI

[CarolinaSamurai]

Very interesting article here.

[Moorgan]

Can't get to si from work. Can anyone recap the article?

[Mr. Scot]

Is this the article where we find out Retired College Coach was right about everything?

I was promised that article was forthcoming.

[Moorgan]

1 minute ago, Mr. Scot said:

Is this the article where we find out Retired College Coach was right about everything?

I was promised that article was forthcoming.

Can't get to Stormfront from work either.

[Moo Daeng]

I can't quote it but the part about Hurney and Rivera was interesting. It doesn't keep them in place forever but certainly suggests so for the near future.

[Sam Mills Fan]

That piece confirmed what I told you guys about Navarro's PR firm.

[CarolinaSamurai]

2 minutes ago, Moorgan said:

Can't get to si from work. Can an

yone recap the article?

Basically goes into detail about how messy the process really was how little it was talked about in the meetings. How unhappy they were with Navarro even though he had the highest bid. He talked about the inner struggle in the league between a high bidder and Tepper. He said that the group of the fanatics owner got declined because of the people that were in his group. 

He was also told that Pittsburgh GM Kevin Colbert and VP of football and business administration Omar Khan gave both Hurney and Rivera strong reviews. 

[The Lobo]

I get why it sold lower, but this is the third time I’ve seen ppl talk about how it’s a big deal the team didn’t sell as high as expected. On First Take, Kellerman made a big deal about how nba teams have sold for higher and Nba could be overtaking the nfl...sure Jan. The bills sold for what, 1.5 billion in 2014. It seems that the nfl, in terms or teams and contracts are just lower than the nba, that doesn’t mean anything. 

Also, this sale is a weird one. JR has allegations and then immediately puts the team up for sale mid season. Maybe some ppl didn’t want to deal with the scrutiny so they didn’t bid. If reports are true, they had higher bidders, but the NFL wanted “their” guy. No one should be complaining bc it sold for less than what they wanted. No one should speculate why it sold for less when the nfl clearly wanted Tepper and no one else. Tepper, from what I have read, is somewhat frugal, so of course he went low on an offer. They basically made Jr take less so they can have Tepper. They could have had the panthers sell for higher if they wanted Navarro or Rubin, but they didn’t chose them. Them getting bummed is stupid. Like I said, this is an odd situation. 

[Mr. Scot]

18 minutes ago, Moorgan said:

Can't get to si from work. Can anyone recap the article?

The basics...

- The league wanted Tepper

- They didn't want Ben Navarro or Michael Rubin

- Apparently, Alan Kestenbaum doesn't exist

- Jerry Richardson got bent over

As we've mentioned before, the league got the owner it wanted but not the price it wanted. Jerry Richardson got neither. His two stated goals were to get an owner from the Carolinas and a price of 2.6 billion. As Breer puts it, "0 for 2".

There's also a blurb at the end saying that the NBA wouldn't allow Steph Curry to be part of an ownership bid. Not that it would have mattered because, despite their business partnership, the other NFL owners didn't like Michael Rubin's group.

It kind of goes along with what I heard on the radio this morning. Chris McClain was talking about Jerry Richardson having a heavy say in the sale process. Darin Gantt basically indicated that he didn't. And the more I read, the more I wonder if he had any say at all.

All those years of loyalty to the NFL sure paid off.

[X-Clown on 1]

Here is a very crude copy/paste quote for those that cannot access the article.  If it looks like poo, blame Trump.

 

Quote

Word around the NFL campfire over the last five months indicated outgoing Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was eyeing two things for his exit.

One, he wanted to find a native Carolinian to buy the franchise he founded in 1995. Two, he wanted to fetch somewhere in the $2.6 billion range for this asset that in essence he had to be coerced into selling in the wake of Jon Wertheim’s explosive Dec. 17 story on the workplace environment in Charlotte.

This morning, Richardson finds himself 0-for-2.

Next week in Atlanta, the NFL will approve (it’s a formality) hedge fund manager and Steelers minority owner David Tepper’s purchase of the league’s 29th franchise. In making it official, Richardson and the NFL will walk away from the high bidder, credit card magnate Ben Navarro, who was both a lot closer to Richardson’s target price and a resident of Charleston S.C.

 

Confused? As team sales go, this was a weird one. The last few pro sports franchises that have sold went for eye-popping rates, way over what was expected. And this one didn’t, which is a little disappointing for Richardson, and for the NFL, no matter they might say publicly.

A total loss, it’s not. But things didn’t exactly go according to plan.

“The only thing I can think of here it’s that it’s gotta be disappointing for the league and for the other owners,” said one source who was involved with a bid. “You look at what the [NBA’s] Nets and Rockets went for, and this is a high-profile East Coast team, and it didn’t turn into an auction the way these things usually do.

“Tepper’s always been super disciplined, and he told the world he was going to be super disciplined on this one, and he waited them out and won. There has to be some lingering uneasiness over that.”

Two months ago in Orlando, the lack of discussion on the sale caught the attention of team owners and executives. In the cases of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, it was the opposite. There was owner-to-owner politicking, there was debate in the room, there were alliances formed over time. The process of picking projects, picking teams, and setting relocation fees was out there for those in the NFL’s inner circle.

To be fair, those situations involved franchise moves and, in the Raiders’ case, gambling; they were more complicated. That said, the Panthers’ sale wasn’t even addressed in the general session in March, and was only broached at a surface level during the privileged sessions that are limited to owners and their kin.

 

So what does that mean? As one team exec explains it, “Anything where it’s as quiet as it was, things are messy, and usually there’s a lot of backdoor dealing and politicking. With this one, no one wanted to go on the record.”

There are reasons why, according to a handful of those we spoke to over the last 48 hours that were in those rooms and have knowledge of these matters.

One, the deal may not have needed to happen quickly, but that was absolutely the preference of the league and other teams. The next meeting after next week is in October, so missing the window this time could cause things to get considerably messier. The investigation would continue, of course, and the NFL likely would’ve had to suspend Richardson at the beginning of the 2018 season.

Related to that, Tepper’s capital and background allowed this to be a clean—and fast—deal. Since he’s paying cash, the NFL won’t have to wade through financing. Since he’s a Steelers minority owner, he doesn’t need to be vetted. And since he doesn’t have a raft of partners with him, there aren’t others who need to be vetted either.

Two, the truth is that there were owners who were not OK with the other bidders. Navarro’s business practices came under scrutiny, so much so that he hired a PR firm to manage the damage. Fair or not, some NFL gentry didn’t see him worthy of their club. And sources say Fanatics founder Michael Rubin, a favorite of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, got the feeling some teams weren’t wild about the new-age bidding group he assembled, based on the questions coming back to him.

 

Three, it was the opposite with Tepper. Other owners wanted him. There’s a belief at the highest levels of the league, that he’ll be good not only for the Panthers, but also the NFL as a whole at a critical time, with negotiations on new labor and media deals looming. Tepper also won’t need to find his voice like most—it was noticeable, for example, to others that Bills owner Terry Pegula is just getting there, becoming more vocal in Orlando, nearly four years in—since he’s already run in these circles.

Maybe the highest compliment to Tepper is that he had a feel for all of it. And so it was easy for him to apply the discipline he does to all his deals here. In a 2010 New York Magazine profile, he said, “I think when it comes to decisions, I try not to be emotional, to drown out the noise and look at the important facts.”

What’s happened plenty in recent years with the sale of pro sports teams is a bidder with all the capital goes crazy and pushes the number into the stratosphere. You can see it happened with the Brooklyn Nets’ bidding, where new owner Joe Tsai will wind up paying $2.35 billion if he exercises an option to become the majority owner in three years; and the Houston Rockets’ sale at $2.2 billion to Tilman Fertitta.

In both cases, the scarcity of franchises to buy put the wealthiest bidders in a spot to say, “This is what I want. Screw my principles, I’m gonna go get it.” That was never going to be Tepper. That line about emotion? Tepper made a call on what the team was worth to him, and stuck to it.

And while Navarro may have been ready to be the drunken-sailor bidder, something probably amped up by the fact that this was his one shot at his local team, the league didn’t trust his money. In the end, as one ownership source explained it, liquidity, structure and partners became a bigger issue for Navarro than anything in his past.

So would the rest of the owners have liked for Richardson to get more? Sure. Some even allowed themselves to dream of the Panthers breaking the $3 billion barrier, because of what it’d mean for the valuation of their own teams.

But in this case, the guy with all the capital also had all the discipline. And the end result isn’t so horrible for everyone else either. With the CBA and TV deals unchanged, outside of the new Thursday Night Football package, Richardson got over 60 percent more for the Panthers than the Wilson family trust got for the Bills in 2014, and it’s in cash, from one of the most influential businessmen in the world.

And of course, the guys at that old country club get the new member they preferred.

 

[bababoey]

Basically the owners did not trust Navarro's money.  Not him as a person, but his money sources.  No one really talked about the sale in any of the meeting on record but all the talking was done behind closed doors.  Also, JR wanted a Carolina owner and at least 2.6 billion and got neither.  Owners were hopping the sale would top 3 Billion and it really did not come close.  How this kind of makes the NFL look bad but in the end the NFL got the owner they wanted.

[Moo Daeng]

11 minutes ago, Sam Mills Fan said:

That piece confirmed what I told you guys about Navarro's PR firm.

The PR firm for his businesses was written about in the press long before you tried to claim his friends only liked him because of a PR firm.

[Moo Daeng]

9 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

The basics...

- The league wanted Tepper

- They didn't want Ben Navarro or Michael Rubin

- Apparently, Alan Kestenbaum doesn't exist

- Jerry Richardson got bent over

As we've mentioned before, the league got the owner it wanted but not the price it wanted. Jerry Richardson got neither. His two stated goals were to get an owner from the Carolinas and a price of 2.6 billion. As Breer puts it, "0 for 2".

There's also a blurb at the end saying that the NBA wouldn't allow Steph Curry to be part of an ownership bid. Not that it would have mattered because, despite their business partnership, the other NFL owners didn't like Michael Rubin's group.

It kind of goes along with what I heard on the radio this morning. Chris McClain was talking about Jerry Richardson having a heavy say in the sale process. Darin Gantt basically indicated that he didn't. And the more I read, the more I wonder if he had any say at all.

All those years of loyalty to the NFL sure paid off.

You missed the final important conclustion:

"the league didn’t trust his money. In the end, as one ownership source explained it, liquidity, structure and partners became a bigger issue for Navarro than anything in his past."

If he was liquid and had more, he would be the owner even if Tepper was comfortable to them.

[Mr. Scot]

There's been pretty extensive discussion about how Tepper set a value for the team and refused to ever budge from it.

Probably wanna remember that the next time we're negotiating with a guy who's about to hit free agency.