Ed Snider and Comcast-Spectacor may be ready to get back into the NBA business — sort of.
Less than a year after selling the Philadelphia 76ers to Joshua Harris, the company is in talks to help fund and construct an 18,000-seat NBA arena along the oceanfront in Virginia Beach, according to a report in the Hampton Roads (Va.) Business Journal.
Comcast-Spectacor is the parent company of the Philadelphia Flyers, in case you’re somehow unaware of that fact while reading a Flyers blog.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that a “top executive” from Comcast-Spectacor will be in Virginia Beach next Tuesday to present details on the arena plan. Virginia Beach mayor Will Sessoms is on record saying that the arena deal would “guarantee” his city a professional sports team should it go as planned.
Comcast-Spectacor subsidiary Global Spectrum would operate the new arena, which would be just the second fully-owned arena in the Comcast-Spectacor family alongside the Wells Fargo Center. Global Spectrum operates (but does not own) hundreds of venues around the world, but only a handful of them are major-league sized.
The Sacramento Kings have been identified by multiple reports as the team that would relocate to play in the new arena. To be clear: Comcast-Spectacor would not own the NBA team like they did the Sixers. The Maloof brothers would continue to own the team and would lease the arena from Comcast-Spectacor. That would essentially be the same arrangement the Sixers have in leasing the Wells Fargo Center from Snider and Co.
Why’s this matter to us? Well, this is Comcast-Spectacor’s money we’re talking about here. We often speak flippantly about Ed Snider’s wealth and the endless stockpiles of money that are available to the Flyers in building their team — salary cap or not. This deal would quite obviously impact those stockpiles in one way or another.
