The Rest, Only Noise

Chapter 1543 Grandpa loves the West Coast

On August 2, 2003, the Paul Gaston family officially announced that they would sell their stake in the Boston Celtics.

According to the agreement between Louis and the Gaston family in the summer of 2001, if the Gaston family is going to sell the team, they need to sell at least 36% of the team shares to Louis to ensure that Louis can have absolute control over the Celtics. Control.

On August 15, the "Boston Globe" broke the news: "Legend Lu will acquire a 60% stake in the Celtics for $312 million."

For those who don't care about financial news, they know that Louis is rich, but they didn't expect to be so rich. The deal gives Louie a 76 percent stake in the Celtics, making him the team's largest shareholder.

In fact, if the Gaston family hadn't encountered a financial crisis, they might not have chosen to sell the team at this good time. Because since Louie took over the team two years ago, the Celtics' market value has improved every year.

This is a good business that never loses money.

The Gaston family later sold a 20 percent stake to Washington businessman Robert Johnson for $104 million.

RJ met Louis when he was in New York. Over the years, the two have cooperated a lot in business. This time, he introduced each other to the board of directors. Although not in the NBA circle, RJ has extensive business cooperation and contacts with many NBA owners, so he was accepted without any surprise.

The one who really had problems moving up the ranks was Ewing.

Ewing's performance in the labor war made the league and the boss have a bad impression of him.

So when Ewing decided to shell out $52 million for a 10 percent stake in the Celtics, his bid was rejected. This made Ewing furious, but there was nothing he could do.

If he wanted to join the boss' circle, he had to follow his rules.

And the rule is that if people don't like you, then you can't get in. ,

So Ewing could only settle for the next best thing, spending half of the money in the plan to acquire a 4% stake in the Celtics. This does not require the approval of the league's board of directors.

There is no need to apply for changes in the ownership of shares below 5%, and even if you want to give them away, no one else can interfere. On a broader level, Ewing, who owns this stake, has not entered the circle.

Lu Yi changed from "Legend Lu" to "Boss Lu". The person most affected by this incident was Lu Wuxia. From now on, his identity has changed from "Legend Lu's son" to "Boss's son".

It's fine if he plays well, but if he doesn't play well, the criticism from the outside world is enough to make him doubt his life. After becoming a boss, the focus of Louis' life has changed a lot.

His focus had to shift from the team to operations.

Louis found that although the Celtics have been on the poor line every year and have basically not paid taxes, the annual income of the team is only ranked in the middle and lower reaches of those teams with positive income, which is higher than the Memphis Grizzlies and the Memphis Grizzlies. A team like the Toronto Raptors making millions of dollars a year is better but limited.

It's no match for a gold-swallowing giant like the Knicks.

Back then, James Dolan came up with a luxury tax of 300 million US dollars. If the money fell on the Celtics, they could directly declare bankruptcy.

And what about the Knicks? They applied for a special case to pay the money over ten years, but in fact, it took less than five years to earn the money back. Although Boston's business is not as developed as New York, it should never be such a benefit.

The day before preseason training camp kicked off, Louie had a meeting with the operations department at his Boston headquarters. Ewing also participated in this meeting.

Ewing is now not only a minority shareholder in the team, but also Chris Wallace's successor, vice president of basketball operations. As for Chris Wallace, he went to Memphis high school.

When Louis spoke out about the unfavorable business development of the Celtics over the years, Ewing couldn't help but said: "Let's not talk about commercial value.

, take a look at our catalog of halftime performances. "

The Celtics are currently the only team in the NBA without a cheerleading squad. Of course Louis knew this.

Now that he has come to power, this matter must become history, and it is useless if the old man disagrees. But when Louie saw the Celtics' catalog of halftime performances, he still didn't hold back. He opened his eyes wide and looked at the above performance project in disbelief.

"Is this **** real?" Of course Louie knew it was true.

Because these programs have existed since 1984, his first season in charge.

Nearly 20 years later, they still exist, and steadfastly say to the outside world that the Celtics are a team that does not pay attention to entertainment. The most solemn halftime performance of the Celtics is to invite well-known local musicians to sing.

But it costs money to do so, and the Celtics are not entertainment-oriented, but they are money-oriented. So try not to do this kind of costly thing.

So they found another way to show the team's humanistic feelings and save money-they would search through the team history list, find those team stars who had their birthdays from October to June of the next year, and try their best to save money. Invite them to watch the game, even if the person has passed away, the family can also be a representative. When they came to the scene, the live DJ directly broadcast the story and deeds of the celebrity, calling on the audience to pay tribute to them.

In this way, they only spent the ticket price to make the event "beautiful".

The most outrageous thing is that the on-site ticket lottery link that has existed since the 1970s is still there.

This ticket lottery session is like this. In the early years, Auerbach thought of an idea in order to generate income for the team. Thousands of prize tickets will be sold randomly on site, and the luckiest winner will receive a player card autographed by John Havlicek.

The activity has continued to this day, the ticket price is getting more and more expensive, and the prizes are getting more and more awkward. The Larry Bird period was the event's most popular period.

Because the player card signed by Bird is really valuable.

Now, it just looks like an obsolete product.

After the meeting, Louis flew directly to Washington to have an interview with Auerbach about the cheerleading team and various plans to develop the Celtics' commercial value in the future.

To Louie's surprise, Auerbach was not as rigid as he thought. The era of Auerbach's generation is over.

He knew very well that Louis' plan was imperative, and telling him in person was just to show respect.

"You can do whatever you want. I'm old and I don't have the energy to take care of these things anymore." Auerbach said playfully, "You seem a lot more anxious than before when you become the boss."

The old man's words reached Louis's heart. is not that right?

How good life was when he was not the big boss before, but now he sees the mess of the Celtics and wants to arrest Gaston and his son and have a good time.

As NBA owners, they are obviously poor like dogs, but they are too lazy to develop the commercial value of the team.

"What are you going to do next? Bring in the cheerleaders?" Auerbach asked.

"Well, this and everything else will have to wait until next season." Louie doesn't have time now, because the new season is about to start. "I'm going to ask a network operator to help me manage the upcoming team forum and team-specific website."

Auerbach's eyes widened when he heard that: "What forum? Do you want to change the arena? Fleet Center is pretty good, right? And what website? Is it a computer?"

"I knew you didn't understand." Louie laughed. "I don't understand? Isn't it just about the computer?"

"That's right ~www.readwn.com~ is the thing on the Internet."

Louis is too lazy to talk about the Internet with an old man left behind by the times.

This matter has been planned by Louis since the Gaston family decided to sell the team.

First of all, it is a fan forum with the Celtics as the core, and then gradually expand it to all NBA teams, attracting fans of every team to play.

To Louie's knowledge, no team currently has its own network

forum. If it works well, the value is immeasurable.

The second is the team's exclusive website, which can display the Celtics' history and honor, provide game schedules, team news and online ticket sales services.

The commercial ruin of the Celtics made Louis rekindle his enthusiasm for work, because if he runs the team with his heart, he will be the one who loses money year after year.

This is the disadvantage of being a boss. As a president, he only needs to ensure the operation of the team and the team department, but being a boss needs to think about making money all day long. Although he can afford to lose money, losing money means that he is a failed boss. How can BossLu bear it?

Affected by these things, the team is the last thing Louis cares about now.

At this point, the Celtics' preseason training camp had begun for a week, and Louie hadn't even asked Bird.

He didn't even know that the training camp had already started, because he was rushing to send a blessing to the marketing team-he asked the team to come up with a new slogan in line with the Celtic ethos within three days.

"Boss, our Celtics have always been a pragmatic team... yelling the slogan Taihu Lakers?" Think for me!"

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