Report: Chris Hansen grabs even more ownership of Kings

Less than 12 hours after Sacramento’s city council voted to support a new arena deal, there’s word Seattle investor Chris Hansen has agreed to buy another chunk of the Kings.

KING-TV reports that Kings minority owner Bob Cook has agreed to sell his 7 percent stake in the Sacramento Kings to the Hansen-Balmer Group in Seattle.

That would give the Seattle group 72 percent of the team, if both this deal and the deal struck with the Maloof Family for 65 percent of the team are approved by the NBA.

“This is one of the tricks they’ve had up their sleeves, just waiting for the right time to execute it. I’m told it’s been in the works for awhile now,” KING-TV’s Chris Daniels told 710 ESPN Seattle’s Brock Huard.

This small stake in the team was sold for a reported $15 million.

The NBA will consider the sale and the potential move of the Kings to Seattle next week in New York.

Sacramento is still working on its own deal to keep the Kings. On Tuesday, a 7-2 city council vote created a non-binding agreement to build a $448 million arena in the city’s Downtown Plaza.

More than half of the money will come from a city subsidy coming from downtown parking revenues. But the new arena plan is also packaged with four billionaires backing a plan to buy the team, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson believes it’s enough to keep the team.

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