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An eighteenth NBA title is insight for the Boston Celtics, the team advancing to their second NBA Finals in the past three years after completing a series sweep of the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. An NBA title would cap a successful season for co owner Steve Paliuca, who just last week saw his Italian football side at Atlanta win the Europa League. Steve, it's wonderful to catch up with you, sir, we've been talking offline. I know
I was so happy for you. Congratulations to you and a team. I want to begin with Atalanta and I want to go through what this means to you. They are the underdogs of Bergamow, overshadowed by their glamorous counterparts of Inter and Milan out of Milan. How important was that for you, for that side, for the history of that club.
I think it was huge.
The Atlanta has not won the europea couple one hundred years, and the city of Bermos is just ecstatic right now. When the team came back from the game that there's an shot of the fans in the stands.
There's ten thousand folks from Burgbo there and when they came back, they couldn't even get out of the airport. It was mob.
And then they took a bus to the practice facility and that was also a mob.
And at the field, so they're feeling great.
There's Cardi sec Yar goalie with the metal and it was just a wonderful time.
That's a big cup. By the way, two NBA Championships were inside that cup.
Steve, your approach to this club and the way this business has been run should be a case study in a lot of schools. I just want to go through some of that so our audience really understands the background here. You've taken a chance on a lot of players that some clubs have left behind, including my own club Milan and the likes of CDK. You picked up Scamaka Lookman too. You've identified talent the likes of Coop Minus. This hasn't
happened once, It's not happened twice, It's happened repeatedly. It's not an accident, Steve, where does that come from.
I got a lot of credits to the a Luca Percassi and the Italian team.
We have on the field, there.
They've done a fantastic job evaluating talent and really the mainstay of Atalanta is their academy. They've invested heavily in the academy in the last fifteen years and that's paid a lot of dividends. Sol Being's a twenty one year old defenseman that starts the youngest one in the.
Entire Syria and several others like that.
And then I think really really taking players and putting them into a team orian system like the Celtics, and having them pass the ball and putting them the right spot. So the coaching staff, Luca Percassi, the whole organization gets credit for that, and you know, it's it's been been wonderful watch. You know. It also helped that we took a risk on rest was Foightland two years ago and he's a very young player.
I met him in.
Stemm Gross, Austria team that he played for, and he was eighteen and we paid I think a record sum for woman, record sums for eighteen year old that time. Twenty million in Manchester United came docking the door of the season or we hated to lose them. If they paid eighty five million, then we invested in Scamaca and several other players to improve the squad and it's been imagining season.
Stave, could we talk a little bit about that as well, the difference between Atalanta and the soundtics. When you have a star like Hyland and you get Manchester United coming in with massive money, how difficult it is to retain that talent at a club like Atalanta and whether that is still the future, is that inevitable, whether you're going to have to sell somebody stars again to continuously reinvent yourself, reinvent the club going forward.
It's really another different the NBA is when you should win a championship, everybody watched your players and so we think we can continue to prosper Atalanta with a mix of young players and a mix of players that are our sold because they have great opportunities. I think we'll
change that a bit. We're playing European football. Before that win, we qualified for the Champions League and that win gives you a slot in the Championszegue as well, So that's going to be really helpful on our recruitment of players to improve the team further, Stave.
To really put you on the spot, has it been harder to run a football club or a basketball team.
They both have similar challenges.
You know. It's all about getting entertaining top talent and keeping them motivated and trying to do everything that you can to make their lives easy so they go out in the pitch or go on the court and play hard, and we try to do that in both organizations.
It's very similar.
Atalanta is kind of the can and do team with a great culture in Italy. It's the favorite team of many in Brahma and Northern Mulan, but also also it's a favorite it's probably everybody's second favorite team in Italy. I just came back from Rome and when we went in an hotel room, my wife and I found a large cake with an Atlanta symbol on it, So it's semi Atlanta fever in Italy right now.
Steve, you are living pretty much everybody's dream. So congratulations for winning life. You have definitely done it. There is this idea, especially as you have two really successful teams Celtics heading to their NBA finals, the second finals appearance in three seasons, how do you monetize this? And I know that that's not the reason why you do this. You're in this for the love of the sport and all the passion. Is it going direct to the distributors?
Do you find it actually more compelling right now because you have the actual intellectual property in a way that has changed with new technological advancements.
Absolutely.
You know, when we purchased the Celtics back in two thousand and three, there was no Facebook or minimal social media, almost nothing that maybe email was the technology of the day. Now what we have is fans were counted back then in the hundreds of thousands. Now they're counting in the millions and possibly five hundred million a million for you know, global soccer teams and also the NBA which is prospering in Europe and China and all the world. So the
landscape's really changed. These teams have become teams of the world, and the Boss of Celtics certainly have that reputation.
It's in terms of monetization. It's just a virtue of circle.
If you get more popular, you get great players, you have more great players, you have more fans, and it's great. It's a great place to be right now with being in the file a couple years in a row.
On that point, though, Steve, when you get a trophy, where does it immediately start to translate into money? Is it immediately in merchandise ticket sales?
The main area quickly translates into a sponsorship So for the for the Celtics, just the building of the brand and having a championship team gets us more sponsorship income. When we bought the club, especially was Demnimus and now it's in the tens of millions and approaching hundreds of millions. You know, brands want to be associated with the brand, like the Celtics and Atlanta as well. Getting the champions
League gets up to lonch to more eyeballs. So having that championship culture and the brand and the reputation that that that's what does it for the long term and creates value in the short term.
You went through what makes Atalanta so special and how you really transformed that team. What about the Celtics they're always winning? Why are they so good?
Well, that's one of the better questions I've ever had.
I guess I think they're good because we've had an incredible management team who live by what grosspec for twenty years now.
Rich Gotham, my president.
It started out with Danny Age and Albrad Stevens in the basketball operation a great coach. They all work together as a team and have been very smart in player trading and acquisitions.
Same story in Atalanta. So it's all.
About trying to trying to get the top talent on the field and doing you know, in both organizations, we've believe been doing more work and exploring.
Using statistics, you know, using scouts.
To see players twenty or thirty or forty times, following players from when they're eight years old in the high school and college. And so that work ethic and kind of a will to win championship pervades each organization. And we've never been happier with those folks. And that's the great thing to see in both these situations. People were crying on the pitch at Atalanta after that victory, and last night in Indiana, which is a great basketball town.
You know, there was a huge celebration after that victory, and I'm just so happy for those players who work so hard. It's just really hard to win championships. The NBA has at different champions the last five years. Same thing in Europe. It's just hard to get up every night and beat these great teams and overcome injuries. So I'm just pinching myself and hopeful the dream will continue next week.
Steve, it sounded like you are a stabermetrics believer there for a second, so that seems to be part of what's going on. I will just say right now, you must be on such a high, probably haven't slept in a couple of weeks. There is this question of what's next in terms of are you still interested in buying
other teams? Is there still value out there or do you think that basically things have been bid up to such a degree given all of the interests that pretty much the opportunities aren't there anymore.
Well, when we bought the Celts in two thousand and three, the headline was venture capitalist paid record price for team that was three hundred and sixty million, and now the values are counted in the four in the four billions. So that's been a question to asked every single year. I think the fact that this technology has changed and sports are now global.
In the fight for.
Eyeballs between the new media you know, such as such as Facebook and and Apple and old media, the networks continues and everyone wants properties and get eyeballs, and the properties that get eyeballs are sports properties.
So I think there's still room room to go up.
Stay before we go, We've got to talk about a loss to the basketball world over the weekend. Bill Walton, we'd love a final word from you on his legacy.
Yeah, I was devastating lesson. I'm so glad we won that game. I felt like Bill was looking down on it. I was very close to Bill in the twenty year run. We had here and his son named to work for us at the Celtics, and I just texted Bill two weeks ago. He sent me a nice his sons, I mean that message about the winning the Europa Cup.
Yes, he was watching that.
He was an avid sports fan and avid Celtics fand and everywhere he went he proselytized what a great experience it was to be a Celtic and be a champion.
So the world and the NBA has had.
A major loss in Bill russ In, Bill Walton and two years before Bill Russell, two of the most iconic centers of the game. And we're going to really miss still and hopefully our players will take extra heart into the games because of remembering Bill.
Steve, we appreciate you, sir. Let's catch up soon. Congratulations for your hard work and success. Boston Celtics co owner Steve Paliuka