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Goodbye Garden? Sports radio is ablaze with talk that the next Boston Celtics owner will ditch the Garden and build a $1 billion-plus arena for the team
Sports Illustrated’s senior NBA beat writer triggered a tidal wave of speculation with a July 1 post on X that hinted at inside knowledge while citing no sources.
“A new majority owner may want to build a new arena,” wrote SI’s Chris Mannix just hours after the news broke that the Celtics were for sale. “And when it comes to gambling, Massachusetts is open for business.”
Boston sports radio mainstays like Mike Felger and Tony Massarotti soon were deep in the the weeds debating the merits of various potential Celtics arena sites in Boston and its environs - all with a rather detailed level of knowledge worthy of an experienced real estate or project exec.
Think Gillette’s acreage near South Station, the sprawling acreage around the Encore Boston Harbor casino in Everett, and the Leader Bank Pavilion (AKA the old Harborlights music venue) in the Seaport.
Ok, for good measure, we’ll add in the old Flower Exchange site off I-93 in the South End near Boston Medical Center. That just happens to be owned by the Abbey Group, the local development powerhouse that is part of the Celtics current ownership team, and plans there for a major life sciences project are going nowhere fast.
Still, the last example aside, all the overheated speculation in the sports media raises the question of whether someone behind the scenes is helping to gin up talk about a potential Celtics arena project.
If so, that certain someone is likely to be connected with the team, its owners, or with the investment bankers and other middlemen they’ve hired to drum up interest on the part of various billionaires in the majority stake of the fabled NBA franchise.
Whoever the spin master is, it’s also a pretty clear attempt to gloss over one of the major drawbacks facing any deep-pocketed tycoon looking to buy a majority interest in the Green Team.
For while the Celtics may be world champions once again, they are merely tenants in the drab, cookie cutter North Station arena they play in - albeit very important tenants.
The Garden is owned by none other than Jeremy Jacobs, the notorious billionaire tightwad who owns both the Bruins and a national concessions empire, Delaware North.
Now we’re told that Wyc Grousbeck and his fellow Celtics owners managed to a wrangle a half-decent revenue sharing agreement out of Jacobs.
That said, any potential buyer for the majority stake in the Celtics is going to want to know if the team truly has a realistic chance of building its own arena, should it decide to part ways with the Garden.
Calculated or fueled from behind the scenes or not, the hype on sports radio makes the idea of building a new Celtics arena sound more realistic than it actually is, while also maybe serving as a trial balloon of sorts.
Of course, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a new majority Celtics owner could run the numbers and decide the team would be better off bailing on the Garden, even if it meant spending $1.5 billion to build a dedicated sports palace.
The return on investment could potentially be huge for the team. Not only would the team get a big boost in revenue from a modern arena, it would no longer have to split its gains with Jacobs.
Yet, the risks are also huge. A host of stadium proposals have crashed and burned over the decades in Boston amid political miscues by blundering team owners and fierce pushback by politically savvy neighborhood residents.
Now, maybe times have changed. But not that much, with development battles in Boston still a blood sport.
Don’t bet on it: Sports book or casino mogul unlikely to wind up buying the majority stake in the Celtics
That’s the word from Andrew Zimbalist, one of the top sports business experts in the world.
The professor emeritus of economics at Smith College and the author of “Baseball and Billions” doesn’t have any predictions as to who the next owner of the Celtics might be.
But in an interview with Contrarian Boston, Zimbalist made clear who he doesn’t think will get the nod - a casino or sports betting book.
Now the Celtics may certainly draw interest from a high-flying sports betting player like Boston-based DraftKings, which has been an official sports betting partner of the NBA since 2021.
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