Barclays Center (and the Nets) Sold to Onexim Sports and Entertainment

Nets Sports and Entertainment and Forest City Enterprises, Inc. announced today that it had executed a purchase and sale agreement with Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Sports.  Onexim purchased the Nets at a total of $875 million and the Barclays Center at a total of $825 million.  Debts from both FCE and NS&E will be assumed by Onexim as Onexim takes over a 100 percent stake of both the team and the stadium.

The transaction is not yet finalized and will not be completed until later this year or early in 2016. NS&E will only receive 285 million in cash up front with the rest of it in notes paid at a 4.5 percent annual interest rate.  Nothing has been reported yet as to how the payment for the stadium itself will be broken down.

While NS&E only held a 20 percent stake in the Brooklyn Nets, they held a 55 percent stake in the stadium itself so this should be seen as a major shake up.  At the very least one would hope that the new ownership group will address some of the concerns that the Islanders fans have had since team moved in (HINT:  Let fans go down to the glass at warm-ups).  One would hope they'd improve the product that the Brooklyn Nets put out as well which should in theory mean more revenue to put into better stadium services for Islanders fans and Nets fans alike.

Perhaps the most interesting (and perhaps depressing) twist in all of this is that the only stadium that FCE will control will be the new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum once it opens.  In turn, fans who have had lackluster experiences at Barclays that clamor for the team to return to Long Island will be hoping that the team returns to a building run by the same company that provided them with said lackluster service in the first place.  It's a sick, sad Irony, but maybe Prokhorov can rescue fans from that, too.

This news and other information can be found at PRnewswire.com.

Update:  Onexis controls the old coliseum rights after all.  Whoops.