SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Before building one of the most profitable and winningest teams in professional sports, Golden State Warriors' owner Joe Lacob was nearly known as Oakland Athletics' owner Joe Lacob.
For more, stream KCBS Radio now.
Lacob, in an exclusive interview with San Francisco Chronicle writer John Shea last October, revealed that he thought he had a deal in place to purchase the A's when the club was up for sale in 2005.
The now 66-year-old told Shea, who conducted the interview as part of a new, yet-to-be-released book, that he "literally" had an agreement with former A’s owner Steve Schott to buy the club. According to Shea, Schott told Lacob he could have the team for $180 million.
However, despite Lacob agreeing to the terms, Major League Baseball never approved the sale, and instead did business with real estate investor Lew Wolff, who owned the A's until 2016 before selling it to businessman John Fisher.
Lacob said the deal was "yanked from under (him)" by then-MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, who preferred to be in business with an "old acquaintance" in Wolff rather than Lacob, who he did not have a relationship with.
Lacob said that the process taught him that owning a sports team is not only about money, but also about who you know. The longtime venture capitalist used that lesson when pursuing his purchase of the Warriors, while competing with Oracle-founder Larry Ellison. Lacob told Shea that experience, along with advice from then-NBA Commissioner David Stern, prompted him to buy a minority piece of the Boston Celtics and build relationships with high-ranking league officials.
"When the Warriors came up in 2010, I had an advantage, ironically – maybe my only advantage – over Larry Ellison, which was I knew everybody in the league really well," he said. Five years after buying after his failed purchase of the A's, Lacob, along with Peter Guber, bought the Warriors for $450 million. The team is now valued at $5.6 billion, second highest in the NBA, according to Forbes.
"It's interesting. The reaction to what happened with the A's kind of helped me get the Warriors," he told Shea.
While the Warriors have skyrocketed in both payroll and popularity in the past decade, the A’; have floundered. According to Spotrac they have the second-lowest payroll in MLB in 2022 at $45.5 million, average the lowest attendance at 8,637 fans per game and are valued by Forbes at $1.18 billion, 27th out of 30 teams.
Lacob added that he still has interest in buying the A's in 2022.
"I've had a standing offer to buy the A's from John Fisher for I don’t even know how long. Over a decade," Lacob told Shea. "It's up to him; it's his business. It would have been smarter to sell to me a long time ago because we would have been partners, and he would have been able to own a part of the Warriors as well. I tried to tell him that. I would have done a ratio deal."
DOWNLOAD the Audacy App
SIGN UP and follow KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Related
