Even if fans boycott, Starbucks won't suffer

Fuad Eltayeb's first reaction on hearing Tuesday that the Sonics and Storm had been sold was an impulse to boycott Starbucks.

"I'm not going to spend any more money for him," Eltayeb said after hearing that company chairman Howard Schultz and other owners had sold the basketball teams to a group from Oklahoma City.

But Eltayeb quickly reconsidered, deciding to continue his daily ritual of visiting a Starbucks in Seattle's Central Area.

"It's not going to make any difference whether I come or not," he said.

Some Starbucks customers online, on the radio and at coffee shops on Tuesday voiced disappointment that Schultz would sell the team, and they made it clear that they expect the team will move to Oklahoma City.

"Starbucks boycott starts at 3:00 today. Who's with me?" one reader wrote on a fan forum at seattletimes.com.

But a spokeswoman said the company had seen no signs as of Tuesday afternoon that basketball fans were taking their frustration out on the coffee chain.

"We would hope that fans would understand there's a separation between Starbucks and the Basketball Club of Seattle. Even though the chairman is the same, the businesses are completely unrelated," said Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil.

Even if a boycott in Seattle materialized, "the impact on sales of the whole company would be zero," said Dan Geiman, an analyst at McAdams Wright Ragen.

Only 83 of Starbucks' roughly 11,800 stores are in the Seattle area. (The state of Oklahoma, by comparison, has 22.)

Metropolitan King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer, who helped broker the sale of the Seahawks to Paul Allen in 1997, said even Sonics fans who are angry at Schultz will not necessarily transfer their feelings to Starbucks.

He recalled that when the Nordstrom family owned the Seahawks, fans sometimes cut up their credit cards and sent them back to the department store chain when they were unhappy with the team.

"When your name's on the door, it's a little different," von Reichbauer said.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or seattletimes.com">mallison@seattletimes.com