When the Boston Celtics made the trip to Abu Dhabi ahead of the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, they were not only there to play exhibition tilts as part of the NBA's wider efforts at ambassadorship of the sport, per recent reporting from Bloomberg's Jake Rudnitsky and Giles Turner. Evidently, Celtics lead Governor Wyc Grousbeck met with Mubadala Investment Co., a sovereign wealth fund based in the United Arab Emirates.
With Bloomberg previously reporting that the wealth fund's interest in being part of an NBA ownership group, the move makes sense for the current ownership group's plans to pursue a purchase of the shares being sold by Grousbeck's father Irv that sparked the sale of the team.
Per Bloomberg, team owners are increasingly looking to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to help with liquidity concerns, as Boston's ownership group is. The Celtics' high payroll and lack of arena ownership creates less fiscal incentive to buyers at the same time that the club is one of the highest-valued in the league has likely complicated the sale process as well.
The league has a limit of 20% on sovereign wealth fund ownership of teams. And according to Bloomberg, such funds are averse to being hands-off with their investment, which may also complicate any such involvement with the Celtics.
But the NBA has already been pursing increased involvement of such funds for some time now in other contexts. Those very Abu Dhabi games Grousbeck and Co. were in town for are one such example, as is the NBA Cup, sponsored by Emirates Airline. The Washington Wizards, owned by Monumental Sports & Entertainment, recently sold a 5% share of the franchise to the Qatar Investment Authority.
While the Mubadala Investment Co., may not necessarily end up as part of an ownership bid for the Celtics, it seems likely that an increased presence for such sovereign wealth funds in NBA circles will be more of a matter of when and not if, based on all that we are seeing reported.