Fourteen years ago, then Nets CEO Brett Yormark pulled off a coup in getting Barclays, the big British bank, to sponsor the new arena not yet under construction at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic. Barclays, then planning on opening retail banks in the U.S., agreed to pay $20 million a year for 20 years, a $400 million bonanza that Yormark’s boss, Bruce Ratner needed to prove the arena could be viable financially. The deal reportedly got reworked twice with the annual payments reduced to $10 million along with a reported $2 million for the Nets.
Barclays never built a network of retail banks but now, with the Nets success, the $10 million is a bargain for the bank even without that network.