In January 2014, a conditional settlement agreement between the NBA, the former ABA clubs and the Silnas was announced. When brothers Ozzie and Daniel Silna negotiated their buyout with the NBA to shut down the Spirits of St. Louis, their lawyer insisted on a clause that specified that the deal would continue in perpetuity. That gave the Silna brothers roughly 2% of the total NBA TV revenue, which was a relatively insignificant money stream in 1976 but still money for nothing. That foresight proved to be brilliant. Both of these men are only notable for their ownership of the Spirits of St. Louis basketball team, and there is duplicate information on these two pages. All in all, they reaped a great return on their original $1 million investment in the Carolina Cougars. [19] With New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson purchasing the New Orleans Hornets from the NBA in 2012 and planning to rename the team, there had been talk that the NBA might negotiate a deal to end the TV deals for the Silna brothers in exchange for rights to the Spirits name. Once Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league, followed in short order by Michael Jordan and a host of other stars, NBA television rights became a hot commodity. [29][30], Ozzie Silna, savvy owner of the St Louis Spirits. The Times calculates that the brothers collected about $750 million since the merger, an amount that has consistently grown mightily through investments. © Copyright 2020 Endgame360 Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Virginia Squires folded shortly after the season. So Ozzie said, 'Look, if one of the seven does not get taken into the league, they're still our partners, so we should give them one-seventh of our TV revenues going forward.' [13][21] It has been reported that a $6 million settlement was under consideration in the 1980s. "Logic was that you take six of the seven A.B.A. [24][14][25] As part of the deal, the Silnas are reported to be receiving a $500 million upfront payment from the former ABA teams. With substantial resources at their disposal, they could afford to play the long game with NBA officials who wanted their franchise, which they hoped to move to Salt Lake City, to go away. In 1974, they wanted to own an NBA team. Finally, the NBA made an offer too good for Ozzie, who was now in his early 80s, and Daniel Silna to turn down: half a billion dollars upfront to surrender all meaningful future claims to TV money. After an attempt to buy the Detroit Pistons fell short, the Silnas purchased the ABA's Carolina Cougars franchise with the expectation of moving it into the NBA with the impending merger of the two leagues. 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So, in that regard, brothers Ozzie and Daniel Silna left money on the table when they struck a deal to not force their way into the league during the 1976 merger. Ozzie Silna, who devised a plan that brought him and his brother more than $750 million in television money from the National Basketball Association without owning a … [13][14] Thus the Silnas would receive checks from the NBA on a yearly basis, representing a 4/7 share of the television money that would normally go to every NBA franchise, or roughly two percent of the entire league's TV money. I propose that Daniel Silna be merged into Ozzie Silna and possibly renamed as "Silna brothers" or something similar. His family said he died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer. RELATED: NBA Players Planning to Break the Rules on Opening Night. [18] The Silnas brothers wanted to join the NBA and had originally hoped to parlay the deal into an NBA franchise of their own. The Ozzie Silna page is structured better and is easier to read. "Ozzie and his brother Dan owned the St. Louis Spirits at a time when the ABA's future was uncertain, but he loved the game and was determined to be part of professional basketball. He was 83. Multimillionaire Ozzie Silna, one of the architects of arguably the best sports deal ever negotiated 40 years ago during his co-ownership of a struggling American Basketball Association team, has died. NBA commissioner Adam Silver released a statement later Tuesday. [19] In 2014, the deal was costing each former ABA team $5 million a year. [3][5] In May 1976, due to attendance problems in St. Louis, the Spirits announced that they were going to move to Salt Lake City, Utah, to play as the Utah Rockies when a lease agreement for the Salt Palace was arranged. The brothers weren't willing to go away that easily. The American Basketball Association began play in 1967 and did something that football’s WFL, USFL, and XFL never did: The ABA posed a serious challenge to the more established national pro league by landing top talent such as George Gervin, Julius Erving, Marvin Barnes, Rick Barry, and Artis Gilmore. "It would make scheduling easier. [10] They credit their terrific deal to planning they had done ahead of the merger for the Virginia Squires owners; the Silnas had expected the Spirits and Colonels to enter the NBA but for the ailing Squires to be left out, and the Silnas thought up the television revenue deal as a way to treat the Squires' owners fairly if the Squires did not join the NBA with the other ABA teams. From 1977 to 2014, the NBA took in about $15 billion in national TV money from increasingly lucrative contracts with the networks. Ozzie Silna, former owner of the ABA's Spirits of St. Louis has passed away at age 83. Why Was the 3-Point Line Created in the NBA. The agreement resulted in the Silnas dropping a lawsuit they filed in federal district court against the league and the teams in hopes of collecting on new revenue streams, like NBA League Pass and foreign TV deals, which obviously were not envisioned in the original agreement.

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