The National Basketball Association (NBA) has approved the sale of the Boston Celtics to a consortium under Bill Chisholm, founder, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of private-equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) Partners. Other members of the consortium include current Celtics shareholder Rob Hale, co-founder and President of Granite Telecommunications, and Bruce Beal Jr., President of real-estate firm Related Companies – both of them Bostonians.
The current ownership is under Wyc Grousbeck, team CEO since its purchase in 2002 for $360 million. According to Yahoo Sports, Grousbeck will stay on as CEO and Governor through the 2027/28 season.
The league expects the deal to close soon. Chisholm’s consortium will take a stake of at least 51 percent then and achieve full control by 2028, for a price that could reach $7.3 billion.
The AP reports the team’s sale price for the initial stage of the transaction at $6.1 billion – not far from Forbes’s December 2024 estimate of the team’s value: $6 billion. This ranked the Celtics 19th in Forbes’s list of the most valuable professional sports teams, just behind the NFL’s Houston Texans. The top NBA team on that list was the Golden State Warriors, ranked second, at $8.8 billion. Topping the list was the Dallas Cowboys, the first team to break 11 figures, at $10.1 billion.
According to the AP, the initial $6.1 billion is the highest sale price ever for an American professional sports team, ahead of the $6.05 billion paid in 2023 for the NFL’s Washington Commanders.
Chisholm’s consortium outbid at least two others, one led by former Celtics minority partner Steve Pagliuca.
