Robert Sarver no longer owns the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. The Arizona banker formalized the sale yesterday of the two franchises to the president and CEO of the largest mortgage company in the United States, Mat Ishbia. This circumstance splashes directly to Real Mallorca, only link, to this day, between the American billionaire and the world of sports. Now the unknown is to know How will these latest events affect the present and future of the Vermilion entity? and if the vice president of the club will want to continue linking his name to the world of football or, on the contrary, he will get rid of the shares he owns.
The only certainty today is that Sarver has been sleeping since yesterday with 4,000 million more euros in his pockets. That is the amount that Ishbia has paid to take over the majority of the two NBA and WNBA franchises. The Tucson businessman, who in his day paid 400 million for the purchase of both teams, has multiplied by ten, in the last 18 years, the value of an operation that, although perfect at an economic level, He would never have carried it out if he hadn’t been forced to.
Three months ago, the vice president of Mallorca, shaken by the pressure, announced the sale of the two teams he had owned since 2004. To carry out this operation, the Arizona magnate hired the public investment bank Moelis & Co, in charge of managing the multimillion-dollar maneuver . The pressures and criticism he suffered from great players and stars of the NBAlike LeBron James Chris Paul, Due to the mild punishment imposed by the league, they were the trigger for the vermillion shareholder to make a move and decide to step aside.
Although his image was greatly damaged in the United States, the repercussion of this scandal has had little travel to the other side of the Atlantic, where the managers of Real Mallorca have been in charge of defending its image tooth and nail, exalting the exemplary conduct that it has always maintained with the club’s workers. Today, the only reality is that Sarver has a heritage, if possible, even higher and he has already shown on numerous occasions that he is not a businessman who likes to have his money standing still.
The American property landed at Real Mallorca in January 2016 with almost 21 million under his arm. Sarver, Kohlberg and other minority partners incorporated Liga ACQ Legacy Partners LLC, a company registered in the city of Wilmont and constituted to acquire the titles that Utz Claassen held at that time.
From the outset, both the Arizona banker and the New York tennis player they became the visible heads of the project, although time was placing each one in their place. Kohlberg, who will visit the island again in January, he was named club president in September 2017; In 2019, he acquired a penthouse located in the historic Palau de Can Puig, opposite Plaza de las Tortugas and, to this day, he closely follows the current situation of the club and everything that happens around the entity. For his part, Sarver has taken on a much more discreet role, His appearances have been dilating over time, to the point that the shareholder has not made an appearance at Son Moix, where he has invested a few million in recent months, from October 2021during the match that measured the vermilion team against Osasuna.
Sarver’s departure from the Suns has gone hand in hand with the also goodbye that Kohlberg has starred in as a minority partner of the franchise. In this way, the link that once united Mallorca with the NBA and that materialized with the arrival of important sponsors such as PayPalhas volatilized.
Now both businessmen and friends have the opportunity to concentrate part of their economic empire in the vermilion club, aware as they are of the good moment the team is going through and of the importance of the permanence that Javier Aguirre achieved last season. Sarver knows that the Mallorca fans do not hold a grudge against him and that, as long as he continues to invest in the club, he will continue to have their support. Now the direction the club will take is the choice of the businessman. For now a real unknown.
