After Starbucks, Schultz's first big gamble ended in defeat
When Howard Schultz bought the Seattle SuperSonics in 2001, his friends told the Starbucks chief he was overestimating what he could do to save the struggling basketball franchise.
“Buying the Sonics could only lead to disappointment and disillusion, they told me … ‘You’re naive,’ they said,” Schultz wrote in a Seattle Times op-ed at the time. “I know you can’t superimpose the Starbucks culture on a different industry. But the similarity between Starbucks and the Sonics is this: The fan is the customer.”
Five years later, with the Sonics in a financial tailspin, Schultz sold the team to a group of outside investors, who promptly moved it to Oklahoma City, infuriating Seattle basketball fans by allowing a beloved team of four decades to leave town.
Today, Schultz is seriously exploring an independent bid for president, promoting himself as a problem solver who can use his business experience to fix the nation’s politics.
But his tenure with the Sonics was marred by conflict with star players, fraught negotiations with lawmakers and private outbursts at low-level employees, according to interviews with more than two dozen former Sonics employees, co-owners and players, as well as current and former Seattle city council members and Washington state lawmakers.
https://www.heraldnet.com/business/after-starbucks-schultzs-first-big-gamble-ended-in-defeat/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=70d98d7721-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-70d98d7721-228635337
When I was a kid the Sonics were the only Major League franchise in Seattle. If Schultz couldn't run an NBA team what makes him think he can run the country?
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