Ex-Microsoft Exec Steve Ballmer To Purchase Clippers For $2 Billion

The Los Angeles Clippers will have a new owner soon. Ex-Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer set a record price with his bid of $2 billion for the franchise per the LA Times.

Ballmer, who was chief executive of Microsoft for 14 years, was chosen over competitors that included Los Angeles-based investors Tony Ressler and Bruce Karsh and a group that included David Geffen and executives from the Guggenheim Group, the Chicago-based owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to three individuals familiar with the negotiations.

Geffen’s group reportedly had the next highest bid at $1.6 billion followed by Ressler at $1.2 billion. Ballmer was the only bidder that wasn’t part of a group. Most recently Ballmer was a part of a group that lost its bid for the Sacramento Kings and planned to move them to Seattle. His net worth is estimated at $20 billion.

If this sale goes through, it would cancel the need for the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting next week to vote Sterling out as an owner. At $2 Billion this would put the sale of the Clippers second to the Dodgers sale of $2.1 billion as the highest price for a sports team in America.

The NBA would have to approve this deal and then there’s still that area of possible miscommunication between Donald Sterling and his estranged wife Shelly. According to LA Times Tech reporter Andrea Chang, Sterling’s lawyer was positive Sterling wasn’t going to sell the team.

Donald Sterling refused to come to the door of his home, but I could hear him holler, “How could she have the nerve to come here?” #clippers

— Andrea Chang (@byandreachang) May 29, 2014

Sterling’s lawyer just told me, in Sterling’s driveway, “My belief is he will not sell this team.”

— Andrea Chang (@byandreachang) May 29, 2014