Sacramento Kings to Seek Foreign Investment for New Arena?


The Kings might have no choice but to look for cash from outside the U.S. to help build a new arena (and thereby, hopefully keeping the team in Sacramento.) Reports the Bee: “The ticket to building a new basketball arena in downtown Sacramento? It could be a green card. A little-known federal program that offers green cards to wealthy immigrants who invest in job-creating enterprises could become an important piece in the financing package for the proposed $387 million arena. The immigration program, known as EB-5, wouldn’t pay for the whole project and is just one of several revenue sources advocated by Mayor Kevin Johnson’s arena task force. But the amount of EB-5 money ‘can be substantial,’ said Dan Barrett, a Manhattan Beach sports-finance consultant advising the Sacramento arena effort. The program has been around for about 20 years and has encountered some controversy. But it’s also generated huge sums of capital and is becoming increasingly popular as conventional financing remains tight. Developers of a new NBA arena in Brooklyn, N.Y., raised $249 million from EB-5 investors to finance improvements near the arena. Immigrants have committed around $80 million to a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.”