What was the heavy contractual loophole in history ?
Steve Berman :
Ozzie and Daniel Silna owned a basketball game team call the St. Louis Spirits , in the old American Basketball Association ( ABA ) . You commend , they used to play with the blood-red , white , and blue ballock instead of the orange 1 everyone else uses .
When the NBA and ABA merged in 1976 , four team were ask over to be part of the NBA : the New York ( now Brooklyn ) Nets , Denver Nuggets , Indiana Pacers , and San Antonio Spurs . That entrust out two squad , the Spirits and the Kentucky Colonels . The Colonels ' proprietor negociate a $ 3 million buyout , and the Silnas accepted a $ 2.2 million payout , with a 2 percent share of TV taxation from the other four ABA team .
The catch : The telly tax revenue werein sempiternity . As in forever .
When basketball was n’t on TV , nobody ever think a 2 percent share of four teams would amount to much . Then in the ' 80s and ' ninety the NBA became white red-hot , and every year the Silnas would get ten of one thousand thousand . By 2014 , over $ 300 million had been paid .
How did this happen ? From " respectable variation business deal ever ? How the Silnas outsmarted the NBA , " by Jon Wertheim inSports Illustrated :
When League Pass and alien program rights get in the picture , the Silnas sued for their share , and the league finally had to deal with the issue once and for all .
The Silnas arrive $ 500 million , plus acontinuing shareof medium revenue from a partnership with the Nets , Nuggets , and Spurs .
In the end , a team that was worth mayhap $ 3 million tops netted over $ 1 billion to its owners , who are still being pay to do absolutely nothing .
This post originally come along on Quora . Click here to view .
standard images via Getty .
