Sports Sonics Settlement...
posted by July 2 at 5:37 PM
onBennett is paying $45 million now and is leaving now.
That covers outstanding rent and outstanding debt. The Sonics still owe $20 million in back revenues. To comply with the revenue-sharing agreement in the original lease, the Sonics would have had to pay a total of more than $50 million.
And now, exactly like last session in Olympia, the city is going back to the legislature to ask for $75 million in County taxing authority to renovate KeyArena to try and attract a team.... Ok.
Asked how this—going to the legislature to ask for more money—is any different than last year, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis pointed to an aspect of the settlement that the city kept hyping at today's press conference: They've got the NBA on record in the settlement saying a renovated KeyArena would be up to specs for the NBA.
Whoop dee doo. NBA President David Stern is already on record saying just that. One of the big arguments the city made in court last week was that the NBA had signed off on a Key Renovation in '06 when the city tried to get a $200 million deal for Howard Schultz's Sonics. Stern came to Olympia at that time and testified that a renovated Key met NBA standards.
The city is also making a convoluted argument to spin its settlement: Part of the deal is that Bennett is on the hook for another $30 million if Seattle doesn't get a team by 2013. This supposedly invests the NBA board of voting owners (1 vote out of 30) in playing ball with Seattle. (The settlement says, yawn, that the NBA will keep Seattle in the loop about teams coming up for sale and any expansion possibilities. Dude, I can get that on the web.)
The $30 million also, supposedly, invests the legislature because the $30 million disappears if the legislature doesn't approve a funding plan next session. But the $30 million also disappears if we don't get a team by 2013... (indeed, at the press conference, Mayor Nickels kept stressing that he hoped we didn't get the $30 million because that'll mean we would have gotten a team.) Huh?
Let me explain that again: If the legislature approves a funding plan in next year's session, the city gets $30 million. If we get a team (the point of giving the city the funding plan approved by the legislature) the city loses the $30 million. And let me repeat again: Huh?
Bottom line: Bennett is giving the city $45 million and taking the team to Oklahoma City.
Oh, the city does get to keep the name.