NBA Courts Investment by Sovereign Wealth, Pension Funds

The National Basketball Association is ready to play ball with sovereign wealth, pension, and endowment funds, provided these investors pass the money.

The NBA's owners recently voted to allow the increasingly flush institutions to buy relatively small, passive stakes in the league's teams, the sports business publication Sportico reported Thursday. The league had previously authorized investments by private equity funds.

The new entrants will operate under similar terms, under which minority investments are approved by the league on a case-by-case basis and don't allow funds to have a say in how the business is managed. Private equity funds can own no more than 20% of a single team, and no team can sell more than 30% to any combination of such investors.

NBA team stakes are among alternative investments that have been all the rage: The asset class was valued at $13 trillion at the end of 2021 and is expected to reach $23 trillion by 2026. Portfolio allocations to alternative investments by state and local public pension funds reached 34% this year, from 9% in 2001, by one estimate.

Because alternative investments have traditionally had less correlation with those in the public stock and bond markets, they've reduced the volatility of portfolio returns.

NBA teams, like North American sports franchises in general, have a particularly glitzy recent performance record as investments. Team values have increased five-fold over a decade, pushing the estimated value of the average NBA team to almost $2.6 billion.

The league's increasingly lucrative long-term television contracts insulate it from the effects of economic downturns.

The NBA's popularity also increases the risk that minority investments in its teams might be used by sovereign wealth funds to legitimize repression by the governments that run them. The English Premier League drew criticism last year after it let Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund acquire 80% of the Newcastle United soccer club.

Manchester City in the same league is owned by the investment group of the Abu Dhabi royal family in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Qatar's sovereign wealth fund has owned the French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain since 2011 and is now marketing a minority stake in the team.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver sidestepped concern about UAE's human rights record and anti-LGBTQ laws in announcing NBA exhibition games in the country earlier this year.

The NBA also became enmeshed in political controversy in China. The league's games were banned from Chinese TV for almost three years after an executive at an NBA team tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters demanding democracy.