Owners of Atlanta Hawks, Thrashers are feuding

As a sports Business columnist, this is a story I have been following over the past few years. What we have here is Atlanta Spirit LLC, a company owned by eight gentleman which owns the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA and the Atlanta Thrashers of the NHL as well as the arena both team play in.

The feud goes back to 2005 when the Atlanta Hawks made a deal with the Phoenix Suns. Boston based owner Steve Belkin disagreed with the deal and then asked his partners to buy him out. Since then the two sides have bickered and argued over what is 30% stake in the corporation was worth, and how the two sides should determine its current worth.

Now a Judge has stepped in and ordered that the partners operate the company under the original agreement signed before the split in 2005. He has also urged the two sides to sit down together and work out a deal to buy out the unhappy partner.

Belkin has a court ruling, that was eventually overturned, that said he should be allowed to buy the corporation form his partners at cost. He was attempting to take control of both teams an the arena for himself. In Tuesdays court ruling the Judge asked the eight partners to sit and come up with a fair way to buy out Belkin.