Hawks CEO Steve Koonin today said that he is hopeful a new owner of the team will be identified by the end of the year. Koonin’s comment, given while speaking this morning at the '14 CSE Sports Marketing Symposium in N.Y., was the first hint of a timeline given by the team since Managing Partner Bruce Levenson announced last month that he would sell his majority stake in the club because of a series of e-mails he had sent to other team officials. Those e-mails warned that a heavy African-American presence at Hawks home games would scare away white customers. Koonin, by contrast, said the team’s biggest opportunities to attract new fans are among African-Americans and millennials. "Atlanta is the NBA’s number five TV market, but not everybody is a Hawk fan," he said. "The African-American audience is through the roof with avidity for the NBA, but we have not converted them to Hawks fans." One concrete step the team is taking, he said, is to hire the league's first chief diversity and inclusion officer.
Other comments from Koonin:
**On game production: "We are going to do something very different. We are going to make it all about entertainment, all about enjoying the NBA experience."
**On ways to repair the damage done by Levenson's e-mails: "We are going to build bridges through basketball. We are going to be involved in the community. We are going to use digital experiences unlike other teams."
**On TV money: "The TV money has changed everything about sports, from the delivery of tickets to the season-ticket holders to the marketing opportunities to the way venues will be built in the future, (which) will be much more intimate, much more smaller, much more focused on production of the event."
