of Tsai's holding company J Tsai Sports, assumed an interim CEO role. Ownership history The original owner of the Nets franchise was trucking magnate Arthur J. Brown, who founded the team in 1967. The next year, Brown sold the team for $1.1 million to entrepreneur Roy Boe. Due to financial losses suffered while the team was on Long Island, Boe moved the team back to New Jersey in 1977 and sold the team a year later to a group of seven local businessmen led by Alan N. Cohen and Joseph Taub, who became known as the "Secaucus Seven". After a lengthy ownership of the franchise and numerous unsuccessful attempts to improve the financial situation of the team, the "Secaucus Seven" finally sold the team in 1998 to a group of local real estate developers led by Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz, who called themselves the "Community Youth Organization" and wanted to move the team to Newark, New Jersey. The next year the group signed an agreement with New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to form YankeeNets, a holding company that owned the two teams, and later also the New Jersey Devils, and increase leverage in future broadcast contracts by negotiating together. After receiving offers from several broadcast partners, including Cablevision, which held their rights at that time, YankeeNets decided to launch its own regional sports television called the YES Network. YankeeNets failed in its attempts to secure a deal with Newark to construct a new arena in the city. By that point in time, tensions between the management of the Yankees, Nets, and the Devils had cause a rift between them, and a decision was made to split the group. With their plan to move the Nets dead, the Community Youth Organization placed the team up for sale. After a short bidding process, the group secured a deal in 2004 with real estate developer Bruce Ratner to buy the team for $300 million, defeating a similar offer by Charles Kushner and Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey. Ratner had purchased the team with the intent of moving it to a new arena in Brooklyn, which was to be a centerpiece of the large-scale Atlantic Yards development. Rapper Jay-Z owned a small minority stake in the Nets from 2003 until 2013. Jay-Z was a leader in the marketing for the team and helped encourage their move from New Jersey to the