Posted at 9:48 a.m., Tuesday, January 8, 2008
WNBA: Storm sold to group of Seattle women for $10M
Associated Press
SEATTLE — A group of Seattle women, led by former Deputy Mayor Anne Levinson, will buy the WNBA Seattle Storm from the SuperSonics for $10 million.Two Microsoft Corp. executives and an entrepreneur round out the purchase group, disclosed today.
The group, calling itself Force 10 Hoops, has until the end of February to close the sale and would need approval of the WNBA board of governors for the standalone franchise.
Levinson, who led the negotiations, said the group was doing it for Storm fans and the community.
The others in Force 10 Hoops are Ginny Gilder, an investment business owner who won a silver medal at the L.A. Olympics; Lisa Brummel, senior vice president of human resources at Microsoft and a Yale softball player; and Dawn Trudeau, who heads Microsoft's database division.
Seattle SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett has owned both teams since July 2006. Bennett's group has filed with the NBA to relocate the Sonics to Bennett's hometown of Oklahoma City.
When Bennett took over ownership, he said he had no intention of splitting the franchises. But last September, he said he might be willing to split the two teams or keep the Storm in Seattle, even if the Sonics were to move. At that time he said the Storm would play the 2008 season in Seattle, but made no commitments beyond that.
The Storm would join a handful of WNBA teams that are independently owned, including Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles and Washington, among others.
