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Dodgers owner Mark Walter has maintained a low profile in his 13-plus years in pro sports, but has used his wallet and vision aggressively to transform the MLB club into a global power, while also moving into several sports. A similar playbook is likely to unfold as he looks to take over the Lakers in a record-setting deal valuing that team at $10 billion.
When Walter and his partners took over the Dodgers in 2012, the club was reeling in many respects. Walter’s Guggenheim Baseball Management bought the Dodgers out of bankruptcy, with the club financially ravaged by former owners Frank and Jamie McCourt. Competitively, it wasn’t much better, with Walter taking over in the midst of what would be a third straight season out of the playoffs.
Since then, Walter’s transformative tenure leading the Dodgers has included:
- Eleven division titles, four National League pennants, and two World Series titles, including in 2024
- A series of large-scale upgrades to Dodger Stadium, including a new round of work costing about $100 million, to preserve the 63-year-old facility as one of MLB’s preeminent ballparks
- MLB-leading attendance totals each year, with the exception of the 2020 campaign, which was heavily altered by the COVID-19 pandemic
- League-record spending on players, led in part by the $700 million free-agent pact for two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani that has helped make the Dodgers an international phenomenon
- Competitive envy among other MLB clubs, even among the Mets, who beat the Ohtani deal with a $765 million pact for Juan Soto
Like his dramatic move to gain majority control of the Lakers, Walter forcefully upended the auction for the Dodgers with an unexpected $2.15 billion bid that more than doubled the prior high price for an MLB franchise sale.
Heightened Restrictions
Much of that outlay has been supported by a 25-year local media-rights deal with Spectrum signed in early 2013 and worth more than $8 billion, marking one of Walter’s first major moves leading the Dodgers. The Lakers, conversely, already have their local rights settled, and are more than halfway through a 20-year, $3 billion pact with Spectrum that began in 2012 and leads all NBA teams.
The NBA salary cap, meanwhile, contains much more stringent controls on team spending and penalties for overages compared to the multi-tiered luxury tax in MLB. Deferred money that also has been central to Walter’s payroll strategy with the Dodgers will be more muted in basketball as salary-cap hits in the NBA do not defer.
So Walter’s outsized impact on the Dodgers contains numerous important clues about what might happen with the Lakers, also looking to rebound after two straight exits in the first round of the playoffs, but not a complete blueprint.
“I think he does everything he can to provide resources, support. He wants to win,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, with Walter and the team since 2016, after news of the Lakers deal broke. “He feels that the fans, the city, deserve that. I think that’s never [been] lost. It’s more challenging us always to, ‘How do we become better and not get complacent or stagnant?’”
