Hale said he has been invited to join other bids but declined to name names.<\/p>\n
Whether or not the initial interest from Mark Bezos extends beyond kicking the tires as a controlling or limited partner remains to be seen as well. Bezos did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Globe.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/6G6DKHWHCUQKLDNBRSVPYG22WA.JPG\")
The defending NBA champion Celtics will open the 2024-25 season Tuesday against the Knicks.Danielle Parhizkaran\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n
The Grousbeck family, which is selling the team for estate planning purposes, hopes to sell 51 percent of all shares by early next year, with the remainder of the shares slated to sell in 2028.<\/p>\n
Since the team announced its intent to sell July 1<\/a>, Steve Pagliuca, a managing partner of the Celtics and co-governor, has been the sole candidate to go public with his interest to buy the team, issuing his statement just hours after the \u201cFor Sale\u201d sign went up.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope to be part of the Celtics moving forward and will be a proud participant in the bidding process that has been announced today,\u201d Pagliuca\u2019s statement read in part.<\/p>\n Irv Grousbeck and his son Wyc Grousbeck, along with Pagliuca and other partners, formed Boston Basketball Partners LLC and bought the Celtics for $360 million in 2002.<\/p>\n Asked this week about his interest in being part of an ownership bid, Robert Epstein, another managing partner and part-owner of the Celtics, declined to comment.<\/p>\n Estimates on an eventual purchase price vary widely, but between $5.5 billion and more than $6 billion is the most commonly cited range.<\/p>\n Both Sportico and Forbes rank the Celtics the fourth-most valuable NBA team, with Sportico\u2019s valuation at $5.12 billion, and Forbes, as of last October, pegging them at $4.7 billion.<\/p>\n A Northampton native, Hale co-founded Granite Telecommunications in 2002 and built it into a corporate juggernaut generating $1.8 billion in annual revenues with more than 2,200 employees and about 17,000 clients including Walmart and CVS.<\/p>\n Hale, the CEO of Granite, and his wife Karen are also prominent philanthropists, giving away more than $400 million to fund everything from cancer research to college scholarships.<\/p>\n Mark Bezos is the younger brother of Jeff Bezos, whose net worth now sits at about $205.4 billion, with Amazon\u2019s market capitalization at $1.97 trillion. According to news reports, Mark Bezos held a $100,000 stake in Amazon in 1996, a year before it went public. The brothers are close, with Mark joining Jeff on his Blue Origin rocket ship that reached the edge of space in July of 2021.<\/p>\n Bezos has a background in marketing and communications. He cofounded HighPost Capital, which according to its website is a \u201ccontrol buyout and late-stage growth private equity platform, investing into the sports, media, health & wellness, leisure and lifestyle sectors.\u201d The website also states that HighPost \u201cbenefits from the backing of the Bezos family.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com<\/a>. Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The formal sale process only got started at the beginning of this month, with banking companies JPMorgan Chase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,193,6,34,6304],"class_list":{"0":"post-90469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-bostonceltics","12":"tag-celtics","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-playoffs","16":"tag-td-garden"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114662584141299357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wyc](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/NALHYDZIX5QSXUY4N37IYVJGN4.JPG\")
Wyc Grousbeck has been the Celtics’ majority owner since 2002.Danielle Parhizkaran\/Globe Staff<\/p>\n