Last week, the Charlotte Hornets started a new era when Michael Jordan completed his sale of controlling interest in the NBA franchise. Jordan will stay on as a minority partner, but financiers Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall are now the lead owners, known as governors in the NBA.
Plotkin and Schnall preside over a 20-person investor group that includes local and regional investors. Among them: musicians J. Cole and Eric Church. Plotkin lives in South Florida, while Schnall makes his home in New York; both have been in Charlotte frequently in recent months while negotiating the sale with Jordan and conducting due diligence on the Hornets.
Both the co-owners already know the NBA: Schnall bought a minority share of the Atlanta Hawks in 2015 (league rules require him to sell that stake to buy into another club), while Plotkin became an investor in the Hornets in 2019. Their purchase values the Hornets at $3 billion; Jordan paid $275 million ($384 million adjusted for inflation) for the team then known as the Charlotte Bobcats when he bought the franchise in 2010.
On Aug. 3, hours after the Hornets disclosed the sale had been completed, Plotkin and Schnall made their first public appearance at Spectrum Center, offering their thoughts on becoming owners and then fielding questions from the media while civic and business leaders as well as coaches and players looked on.
The co-owners vowed to build a winning team — something Jordan could not do during his 13 seasons at the helm — while continuing Jordan’s off-court success building a consistently profitable organization with strong community ties.
Afterward, CBJ was among several outlets that participated in short exclusive interviews with Plotkin and Schnall. Below are excerpts from that conversation.
Schnall on how he believes Spectrum Center will be “dramatically different” after the Hornets complete $215 million worth of taxpayer-funded renovations:
Modern arenas have great club areas. We’re sitting in one now (the Crown Club on the building’s court level). Think about something dramatically more modern with a real North Carolina flavor to it. And we will have a much bigger lower (seating) bowl than we have today. So, more lower-bowl seats.
We’re also intending — there are new versions of social opportunities for people. For instance, in Atlanta we have something called “Atlanta Social.” It’s theater boxes with seats in groups of four, six or eight and then everybody goes behind those seats (to socialize). It’s a much more social environment, where there’s shared food, and it’s just much more of a night out. Basketball’s included, but you can also have a great time eating and drinking and being with your friends.
And we’ll have places of business, and we want to attract business customers here to come into a club like this, which will be redone, and we’ll have private areas. And then we’ll have social areas, maybe for the younger set. There is a vibe in the Atlanta arena (State Farm Arena) today that you’re in some place special.
Here, today, I think this arena (Spectrum Center) looks great but when you come here today, you come to watch basketball. We want to make it so we’ll have plenty of people who want to do that, but we also want to satisfy the needs of people who want to make it a night out or want to conduct a business or want to have a real social environment and watch the fourth quarter, that’s okay. We can do that, too.
Plotkin on whether additional investment may be needed to realize their vision for the arena and other aspects of the business:
I think, with the facility, the city’s made an agreement with us, along with the practice facility (a $60 million project the city agreed to pay for as part of the Hornets’ lease extension through 2045). This is our opportunity. You know, we’re not renovating this arena (again) three years from now. (The renovations will take several off-seasons to complete.)
We want to make sure it’s really great, and this is the opportunity to do so. If that requires additional funding, we’ll make sure that happens. Because you don’t get a second chance.
And I think for our players, we were just in the weight room — it’s not a great weight room (laughs). We want them to have a great experience (with the new training center). People talk about attracting free agents. It’s all part of a winning culture. (Modernizing facilities is) a really important thing to do.
We’ve had a lot of meetings with business (department) heads starting a few months ago and we’ll look for ways to invest and upgrade where we can and send a message that we’re really going to take care of our people — not that that hasn’t been the message, but just further increase that message.
And, certainly, with our players, those are our most important assets. We want this to be a market that’s well respected, that’s discussed and talked about in NBA circles. That’s not the sense I get today.
Read more of Erik Spanberg’s interview with Plotkin and Schnall in the Charlotte Business Journal.
