The Los Angeles Lakers are changing hands.
The Buss family, which has owned the team since 1979, will sell its majority stake to Mark Walter, ESPN reported Wednesday. Walter is an owner of the Dodgers, Sparks, and Cadillac’s Formula One team, and he is the primary financial backer of the PWHL.
Jeanie Buss will stay on as the team’s primary governor after Walter takes over, and ESPN reports she will continue to run the team for “at least a number of years.” The deal values the team at $10 billion, according to ESPN.
The Lakers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Walter, 65, is the CEO of Guggenheim Partners and TGW Holdings. He also, through a holding company, owns stakes in Chelsea and Ligue 1’s RC Strasbourg. He already owned a sizable minority stake in the Lakers before Wednesday’s report.
The Buss family is one of the NBA’s longest-running controlling owners. Jerry Buss bought the Lakers, Kings, and Los Angeles Forum for $67.5 million in 1979. Jeanie Buss, 63, has been governor since her father died in 2013.
According to ESPN, Walter has had first pick at the Buss family’s 66% majority stake ever since 2021, when he took over Philip Anschutz’s 26% stake in the team. The Athletic reported Wednesday that the deal “could reach $12 billion in value,” while ESPN reported that the Buss family will keep 15% of the team.
The $10 billion valuation would launch the NBA—and sports franchise sales generally—into another stratosphere. The recently-announced Celtics sale is set for $6.1 billion, a then-record price tag for U.S. sports that required a complex, multi-stage agreement and a consortium of investors to fund the deal. Estimates generally had the Lakers valued between $7 billion and $8 billion, with the Knicks and Warriors ahead.
It’s a dramatic increase in the NBA, where Mark Cuban sold his majority stake in the Mavericks in a deal that valued the team at $3.5 billion less than two years ago.
It may even reshape team prices in other sports. The previous record valuation was for the 49ers, set just a few weeks ago, when the NFL team sold a small stake in a deal that valued the team at $8.6 billion.
The deal comes as the NBA’s new 11-year, $77 billion media rights deal—roughly triple the old deal—is about to kick in. ESPN retains the “A” package, with NBC making its return as an NBA broadcaster, and newcomer Amazon Prime Video joining on. Starting next year, teams will earn about $140 million each from the new rights agreement, but that figure could rise to about $290 million annually by the end of the deal, according to The Athletic.
The 17-time NBA champions are one of the league’s most iconic franchises, and currently roster two of its biggest superstars in LeBron James and Luka Dončić.
But the team was eliminated by Minnesota 4–1 in the first round of the playoffs this year. James, 40, has one year remaining on a two-year, $101.3 million deal. Dončić will be eligible to sign a maximum four-year extension with the Lakers in August and has said he intends to stay with the team.
In 2013, the family’s stake originally passed from their father to all Buss siblings, with Jeanie as the governor. But infighting followed in 2017. Jeanie fired her brother Jim as vice president of basketball operations for not consulting her on trades. Jim and brother Johnny took the battle to court with the goal of ousting Jeanie from the team’s board of governors, but she emerged victorious with control over the club.
Walter and Guggenheim bought the Dodgers in 2012 and has overseen two World Series titles. In 2014, he bought the Sparks with a Dodgers ownership group that includes Magic Johnson. The team had previously been owned by Jerry Buss and led by president Johnny Buss until 2006.
His financing of the PWHL has brought him even wider name recognition—the league’s equivalent of the Stanley Cup is called the Walter Cup after him and his wife, Kimbra. Walter’s TWG also owns the parent company of Gainbridge, whose name is on the Pacers’ and Fever’s home in Indianapolis and sponsors a number of high-profile athletes, including Caitlin Clark.
The sale is the second major non-Finals news out of the NBA amid the Finals. On Sunday, the Grizzlies traded Desmond Bane to the Magic for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, four first-round draft picks, and a pick swap. The big exchange dominated NBA talk shows ahead of a decisive Game 5 Monday.
Once again, the league has found itself with a headline-making transaction on the day before a Finals game.
