This was twenty percent higher than the price offered by other purchasers, but for Paul Allen, this money was just a drop in the bucket.
A year ago, he invested $194 million in acquiring the Seattle Seahawks, and immediately after the acquisition, he invested another $140 million to build a brand new stadium.
During the acquisition of the Nets, no one was a match for this Microsoft giant. These IT wealth newcomers, led by Microsoft, fully took the big stage as behind-the-scenes players in the sports industry in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Compared to owners of traditional, heavy-asset industries who have a lot of wealth but little cash and face the embarrassment of needing to rally people to form consortia when playing professional sports, IT guys like Allen, who are protagonists of stock market wealth tales, often have an asset pressure comparable to Mount Tai, with tens or hundreds of billions at their disposal, and a very ample cash flow.
