Four “serious suitors” would be willing to negotiate with Bucks owner Herb Kohl about buying the team, reports Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times. Kohl said last month that he’s seeking partners to share the ownership of the club, but the 78-year-old insisted then that he “isn’t going anywhere,” in spite of years of rumors that he’d give up the team.
One of the suitors is a group of five or six investors with Wisconsin ties, according to Woelfel, who notes that Kohl would appear to prefer to make sure the club remains in the hands of locals. Another potential owner is someone from Chicago who’s had an offer on the table for years, Woelfel writes without identifying who it is. Reading between the lines, it seems like that’s Michael Heisley, the former Grizzlies owner who lives in Chicago and has been connected with the Bucks in the past, though that’s just speculation on my part.
If Kohl sells the team sometime soon, the price could come in anywhere from $380MM to almost $500MM, according to Woelfel. That wouldn’t include the cost of a new arena, a project Kohl has been pushing civic leaders to support. Two of Woelfel’s sources believe there’s a strong chance the arena will be built. Kohl, a former Wisconsin senator, is “obsessed” with making the arena a part of his legacy, Woelfel writes, having heard from a source who says Kohl is considering footing more than $100MM worth of the construction bill.