Joe Lacob Rumors
Nick Friedell: About a two minute tribute video just played for KD. He looked up a few times from the Nets bench to watch. Bob Myers stood up and clapped along with Warriors owner Joe Lacob. KD pointed over in their direction to acknowledge the moment.
Not selling, a source told The Post, is Joe Lacob of Kleiner Perkins, who currently owns the largest stake in the team at 35 percent. The Warriors has 15 investors total, including Lacob’s co-chairman Peter Guber, a Hollywood executive with a 20 percent stake.
Warriors losing 70% of revenue without fans at games
The Golden State Warriors are losing 70% of their expected revenue without live fans, according to billionaire co-owner Joe Lacob. Lacob mentioned the loss while speaking at a SporticoLive event on Thursday. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has previously said that league-wide, about 40% of revenue comes from having fans at games.
The Warriors are more affected than others because the team doesn’t have a large local media contract while also facing expenses related to their new $1.6 billion arena. The privately-funded Chase Center, which opened in September 2019, was partially financed by a loan from John Hancock. Though the total amount borrowed is unclear, the team did successfully lobby for permission from the NBA to exceed the league’s then-debt limit of $325 million.
Late last year, the team proposed an ambitious plan to allow 50% capacity at the Chase Center—it involved a commitment to spend $30 million to give fans rapid PCR tests at the door and only admit those with negative results. It was rejected by the city’s department of public health for being too risky. “We haven’t been able to activate that yet, but we hope to be able to do that sometime this season,” Lacob said. “It’s actually very costly, but the truth is, we feel that whatever we spend on it, we will get that much back if we can have fans in the building.”
Chamath Palihapitiya: When I land, I call my friend Phil Hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) He listens to my sob story and says, hey, let’s go and have some pizza and watch basketball with my friend Joe Lacob. So the next day, a Saturday, we go to Joe’s house to eat pizza and watch some basketball. At the end of the pizza, he tells me that he’s close to buying GSW. At the time, the news was that Larry Ellison was going to buy the team and I didn’t think it likely that Joe would win the bid. But he was confident and says to me: “I have 10% of the team you can buy for $25M if you want to join our bid.” I shook his hand, wired the money and at 34, became a co-owner of an NBA team. Pretty nuts! Joe’s obviously done an amazing job building the best franchise in sports and I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to be along for the ride.
