For the second time in as many years, the Los Angeles Lakers are being sold.
Dodgers owner Mark Walter, currently under federal investigation for fraud, is selling his majority stake in the team to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner at a team valuation of $12.5 billion. The deal will need final approval from the NBA’s board of governors. ESPN first reported the news Wednesday.
Kushner, 41, has a famous last name. His brother, Jared, is married to U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka; their father, Charles, built his fortune as a real estate developer and is the U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco.
The billionaire was thrust into the sports spotlight in late July when his holding company, Thrive Eternal, was announced as the anticipated lead investor of FIFA’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup. The failed proposal for FIFA Forward Enterprise sought $4.2 billion from outside investors, and Thrive Eternal was the only investor officially tied to the deal.
Falling under the umbrella of Kushner’s venture capital firm Thrive Capital, Thrive Eternal was founded in April when it acquired a stake in the San Francisco Giants. Kushner became a minority owner of the Miami Heat in late 2024. Before that, he owned a piece of the Memphis Grizzlies. Kushner and Iger had previously been tied to a possible NBA expansion team in Las Vegas.
Kushner’s first entrepreneurial venture came while he was an undergraduate at Harvard. During his junior year in 2007, he and two graduate students launched Vostu, a Brazilian social network that later pivoted into gaming and now has more than 100 million users.
Thrive Capital largely invests in technology companies, including OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe, and Ramp. The company also created Thrive Holdings, an AI-focused company that raised $2 billion in new funding in August. The company is now valued at $12 billion, according to The New York Times.
Kushner’s business interests have also extended into his family’s real estate empire. He and Jared each held 50% interest in JK2, a property-management company that a Maryland judge later found committed “widespread and numerous” violations, including improperly collecting debts and charging tenants illegal fees. JK2 was succeeded by Westminster Management, which remains part of the Kushner family’s real estate business.
Democratic Donor With Ties to Trump
The Kushner family’s ties to Trump run deep.
Joshua’s older brother, Jared, is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and served as a senior White House adviser during the president’s first term. Their father Charles was pardoned by the president in 2020 after pleading guilty to 18 federal counts, including tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering.
Despite his close family ties to Trump, Kushner has long identified as a Democrat, as has his wife, supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss.
In 2016, a Kushner spokesperson said he was a lifelong Democrat who did not vote for Trump that year, while Kloss was more public about her support for Hillary Clinton, posting a photo of herself filling out an absentee ballot with the hashtag #ImWithHer. Neither attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
“It is no secret that liberal values have guided my life and that I have supported political leaders that share similar values,” Kushner said in a 2017 interview with Forbes.
Still, Kushner and Kloss have generally stopped short of publicly criticizing Trump, instead acknowledging the challenges created by their family ties. “At the end of the day, I’ve had to make decisions based on my own moral compass—forget what the public says, forget social media,” Kloss told Vogue in 2018. “I’ve chosen to be with the man I love despite the complications.” In June, Kloss attended the dedication ceremony for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Unlike his older brother, Kushner’s involvement in politics has largely come through financial contributions to the Democratic Party. In 2012, he gave $12,500 in support of President Barack Obama, federal election records show. Most recently, he gave $250,000 to the political action committee Growth Democrats in 2024.
FIFA Failure
For four days at the end of July, Kushner’s name was tied to the biggest scandal in sports: FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan to create a $20 billion commercial arm to further monetize the World Cup.
Infantino told individual member associations that they could get $40 million each for the next World Cup cycle if they accepted his plan by a Sept. 19 deadline. But the $4.2 billion investment led by Kushner was more alarming to soccer leaders inside and outside FIFA, who had not been privy to discussions around the plan.
Kushner worked on the proposal in secret for nearly a year, according to the Financial Times, including approaching the former head of Formula 1 parent Liberty Media, Greg Maffei, with the concept last summer at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“I think [Kushner] approached me because he said, ‘Look, we’ve been thinking about this with FIFA and we know of your experience with F1,” Maffei told the FT. “We actually pulled off into a little corner under some trees in the shade because it can get hot there. We talked for a while about a vision for what this could become.”
Kushner delayed Infantino’s plans to announce his proposal just before the World Cup final because he thought it needed more work, the FT reported.
After the news became public, Infantino’s top advisor, former U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro, resigned during the turmoil. Cordeiro questioned why FIFA needed outside capital after generating a record $15 billion during the recent World Cup cycle. “What will investors ultimately gain, and at what cost to football?” he posted in a statement on social media. Infantino called off the proposal later that day.
Basketball Ownership Power Couple
In buying the Lakers, Kushner will be forced to sell his stake in the Heat, and walk into the ownership box of his third NBA franchise.
But it’s the fourth professional basketball team in his household, as Kloss joined a group of investors that purchased a minority stake in the New York Liberty at a reported $450 million valuation, then a record for a women’s professional sports franchise.
In February, Kushner and Kloss, who have been married since 2018, attended NBA All-Star festivities at the Clippers’ Intuit Dome.
Kloss is best known in some circles as the ex-best friend of Taylor Swift—although she and Kushner surprised many fans by attending the singer’s recent wedding to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. But she’s also a businesswoman in her own right. In 2023, Kloss acquired British fashion and culture magazine i-D through Bedford Media, the media company she runs with Kushner. The company later announced plans to relaunch Life magazine in print and digital formats. She also founded Kode with Klossy in 2015, a nonprofit organization aimed at getting young women involved in coding and technology.
The couple owns several multi-million dollar homes, most notably the beachfront Malibu Wave House, which they bought for $29.5 million in 2024.
