Lightning Owner To Sell Team

February 26, 1999 / 9:44 PM EST / AP

Tampa Bay Lightning owner Art Williams, facing financial losses and mounting frustration less than a year into ownership, said he has reached agreement to sell the team.

A sale to a group headed by Michigan billionaire William Davidson, which Williams outbid for the team 10 months ago, could take place as soon as Monday.

"We do have a verbal agreement on everything," Williams told the St. Petersburg Times. "I just don't see it breaking down."

The newspaper reported the purchase price to be about $115 million, some $2 million less than what Williams paid last year when he bought the debt-burdened NHL team last May.

Davidson owns an entertainment empire that includes the NBA's Detroit Pistons, the WNBA's Detroit Shock, the International Hockey League's Detroit Vipers, the Palace of Auburn Hills arena in suburban Detroit and the nearby Pine Knob Music Theater.

Davidson last year made a contingency-burdened offer to buy the Lightning from Japanese holding company Kokusai Green and was rejected.

"We're in it for the long haul," said Tom Wilson, president of the Pistons and the Davidson-owned Palace Entertainment Group. "We're not coming in to fail. We're coming in to make this team a thing Tampa can be proud of, and a benchmark franchise in the league."

No major changes are planned in the Lightning's hockey operations, where Jacques Demers is coach and general manager.

Williams saved the Lightning from possible bankruptcy and eventual collapse with his no-strings-attached bid of $117 million. The purchase included the Lightning's lease to the Ice Palace and a nearby parcel of undeveloped real estate.

Williams cleared the 8-year-old franchise of debt, but has incurred self-projected losses of up to $20 million as the last-place team struggled on the ice and at the gate.

The Lightning, with a record of 13-41-5, has an average announced home attendance this season of 10,894 barely more than half of the Ice Palace capacity.

"I had an amount in my mind that I could afford to lose over four, five seasons," Williams said, "and I lost that amount in (less than) one season."

The former Georgia high school football coach grew weary of the Lightning's ineptness. Unfamiliarity with hockey only amplified his frustration.

"It was a combination," he said, "of losing the money, and losing the games, and thinking over all those months, `You know what? This ain't fun.'"