Ballmer calls Seattle's lack of NBA team "real estate problem"
An audience member asked him about bringing an NBA franchise to Seattle. Here is Ballmer's response.
"The challenge there is a real estate challenge. Honestly, the building that is Key Arena would not be able to have an NBA team that would be competitive," he said, adding it's a nice building to look at. "If you don't have a certain kind of arena, you can't sell tickets at a certain price ... you can't pay players to be a competitive team."
He said it takes $300 million, $400 million, $500 million to build a competitive arena, and that either needs to come from real estate investment or the city, county and state, which was not interested before in making the investment.
"If somebody could solve the real estate problem, someone could solve the NBA problem," he said, and he added it's up to the real estate industry to solve it. "If you find an answer to that problem, I'll buy the first season ticket."