Buying Utah Jazz a high note for Mike Cannon-Brookes, Ryan Smith and Ryan Sweeney

Owning an NBA team is about the next 10-20 years, rather than just upcoming seasons, Atlassian CEO says.

The NBA shot clock lasts just 24 seconds, and it took Mike Cannon-Brookes about that long to say yes to a multi-billion-dollar deal that will make the Atlassian chief executive the first Australian to own an NBA team.

Cannon-Brookes has revealed himself to be one of three tech billionaires to buy the Utah Jazz, joining Qualtrics boss Ryan Smith and Accel venture capitalist Ryan Sweeney in a blockbuster $2.2bn deal that the close friends hope will be a slam dunk for the state of Utah, and their balance sheets.

Most outlandish plans formed on pub stools don’t come to fruition, but then Cannon-Brookes has always prided himself on being an outlier.

“It starts off as bullshitting in the pub, like ‘hey this would be cool’,” Cannon-Brookes tells The Weekend Australian.

“Then a few years later, fast forward to one random Tuesday morning I get a call that ‘hey bro, this is happening. I’m calling to see if you want in or not’. And I’m like ‘f..k yeah, OK. Wait, I’d better check with the wife. Otherwise, f..k yeah. I’m in.’

“It’s three good friends, all sharing a passion for basketball, all have quite good business minds and ability to do things from outside the mainstream.”

For Cannon-Brookes, the buy represents a proud stewardship of a franchise he’s been a keen fan of since the 1990s. The deal encompasses not only the Jazz NBA team, but also its e-sports, WNBA and G League teams, and Vivint Smart Home Arena, as well as a baseball team, the Salt Lake Bees.

Being an owner of the Jazz is a role Cannon-Brookes says is about the next 10-20 years, rather than just upcoming seasons.

“You’re thinking way more at a higher level, about ‘do we have the right people to add to our culture, the values’,” he says. “Atlassian and Qualtrics are very value-centric, long-term thinking, culture-first places. We’re not going to hit a jump shot, but we can bring a lot of that thinking and understanding of building great long-term entities in competitive situations.

“All three of us are pretty competitive people, we’re not doing this to just go and hang out.”

Cannon-Brookes declined to comment on the size of his investment, but sources close to the deal suggest it’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He and Sweeney are minority owners, with Ryan Smith — who co-founded software company Qualtrics in his parents’ basement before selling it to SAP for $US8bn — the majority owner with wife Ashley.

The Atlassian co-founder can afford the investment now more than ever, given Atlassian hit fresh highs on the Nasdaq this week. The Sydney-born software company has been buoyed by increased demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has doubled in valuation since the start of the year. The bumper year has pushed Cannon-Brookes’ net worth to an estimated $20bn.

The Utah connection runs deep for Cannon-Brookes, whose wife Annie’s family lives in the state. Smith, who studied in its third-largest city, Provo, and still lives there, hopes the deal will cement a long-lasting connection between Australia and Utah. He has committed to keeping the team in Utah, amid widespread speculation the team would move to a bigger market.

“This is a franchise that has been in one family almost since its inception, 35 years, so it’s not an asset that trades around,” Smith says. “I grew up in Utah and this team was never available [to buy], ever. Mike and I were together for his 40th birthday, at the Jazz arena … and this just felt right.

“I hope every Australian can visit Utah, and that the Jazz can become their team.”

Smith adds that the purchase represents part of a new era for NBA team ownership. The league has always attracted entrepreneurs, with previous Jazz owners the Miller family known for their fleet of car dealerships, for ­example, but the current crop of team owners are more likely to have made their wealth from technology than used cars.

Smith, Sweeney and Cannon-Brookes join a growing club of tech billionaire team owners, including Mark Cuban, Steve Ballmer and Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai, who bought the Brooklyn Nets for $US2.3bn about a year ago.

“One of the things about the NBA that’s quite unique is its big embrace of technology,” says Cannon-Brookes, who is now the youngest NBA team owner at 41.

“Streaming went live in 1995, which is crazy. I didn’t have cable TV in Australia, so I was trying to stream games over a 56k modem. They’re a very technology-forward organisation.”

For NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Cannon-Brookes’ ownership stake is reflective of the league’s global growth. Some of the league’s best players are Australian, with Ben Simmons, Kyrie Irving and Utah Jazz’s Joe Ingles all hailing from Down Under, and Australia trails only Canada for its number of players in the league, outside of the US.

“Last season, Australia had the second-highest number of international players in the NBA, and Mike’s involvement is another great milestone for us,” Silver says.

“We look forward to this new era of franchise leadership with the Jazz and the contributions this group will make to the league.”

Fellow co-owner Sweeney was the first outside investor and board member of both Atlassian and Qualtrics, and says it’s the friendship between the three executives that will translate to success off and on the court.

“Often the strongest relationships are those that are built while doing hard and exciting things, and we’ve all worked together since their companies took their first dollar of funding from Accel,” Sweeney says. “The relationship has only gotten stronger as time has gone on.

“I love that nearly 10 years after first meeting each other, we’re still able to support them in one of their most exciting ventures yet.”