'Tech Titan' Arora spearheads $1bn shot at NBA's London basketball team

The US technology billionaire who led the acquisition of English cricket's most lucrative Hundred franchise is in talks to buy London's new NBA Europe team. Sky News has learnt that Nikesh Arora, chief executive of the New York-listed cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, is on a list of bidders being considered to acquire the latest addition to the capital's sports line-up. Sources said that Mr Arora had assembled a consortium of investors prepared to pay more than $1bn for the London team, which is among the most highly prized of the 12 new outfits. Mr Arora last year assembled a group which instantly became known as the 'Tech Titans' when it bought a 49% stake in the Lords-based London Spirit Hundred team. Among the group were the boss of Google and its parent company Alphabet and his counterpart at Microsoft. It was unclear this weekend whether either man was involved in Mr Arora's consortium targeting the NBA Europe's London team. One insider said that Mr Arora, a former executive at SoftBank, the Japanese technology giant, was "serious" about his interest in the NBA team. "He is committed to being involved in sports in London," said one ally. The London franchise is expected to command a price tag of over $1bn when the auction comes to a conclusion in the coming month. The US National Basketball Association (NBA) wants to generate billions of dollars by selling the rights to a dozen teams which would be based in cities across the continent, including in Manchester, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Madrid and Milan. Advisers to the NBA received indicative bids in late March from dozens of prospective investors ranging from private equity firms and football clubs to wealthy individuals and media groups. The field for some of the cities is now being narrowed, with decisions about the buyers for a number of them - likely to include Berlin, Madrid and Milan - expected to be made within weeks. The London team attracted multiple bids worth hundreds of millions of pounds, including from the billionaire Reuben family and a consortium which includes the Formula E owner Liberty Global and Daniel Levy, the former Tottenham Hotspur chairman. Owners of some of the continent's biggest football clubs expressed an interest in other locations, including RedBird Capital Partners, the owner of AC Milan, and Qatar Sports Investments, owner of the French Ligue 1 side Paris Saint-Germain. The field of bidders offers further evidence of the deluge of global capital pursuing a home in top-level sports, although the overnight collapse of FIFA president Gianni Infantino's plans to sell a stake in the commercial rights to the tournament - revealed by Sky News sports correspondent Rob Harris - underscores the jeopardy attached to such processes.