AOL Time Warner shocked Texas businessman David McDavid on Monday by informing him it is selling the Hawks, Thrashers and Philips Arena operating rights to someone else.

After almost a year of negotiations with McDavid, AOL's Turner Broadcasting plans to announce this afternoon that it will sell Atlanta's professional basketball and hockey teams and arena rights to a group of eight investors from Atlanta, Boston and Washington, people familiar with the deal said Monday.

The group, the sources said, includes three men who last year tried unsuccessfully to buy Charlotte's NBA expansion franchise --- Boston businessman Steve Belkin and Washington businessmen Bruce Levenson and Ed Peskowitz.

The Atlantans in the group are two longtime members of the Hawks' board of directors, Michael Gearon Sr. and M.B. "Bud" Seretean; Gearon's son, Michael Gearon Jr.; and Ted Turner's son-in-law, Rutherford Seydel. The other member of the group is Washington businessman Todd Foreman.

AOL has had secret negotiations with the group for the past two or three weeks, according to people familiar with the company's protracted effort to sell the teams for an estimated $350 million. That traces to roughly the point at which the McDavid negotiations ran into a snag because of problems with the Philips Arena bonds.

When the arena was built, Turner Broadcasting pledged the Hawks' franchise as collateral in case it defaulted on its obligation to make the annual bond payments. To complete a deal with McDavid, the company needed to substitute a letter of credit for the franchise as collateral so that it could sell a lien-free team, as required by McDavid's lender. The collateral is expected to remain intact under the new deal, a Turner source said, suggesting the purchasers won't require outside financing.