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Former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry believes NBA franchise valuations will continue to go up, but not at the explosive rate recently witnessed.
Lasry, who alongside Wes Edens bought a total 50% stake in the Bucks at a $550 million valuation in 2014, sold his 25% stake in 2023 at a $3.5 billion valuation. That means the Bucks’ value increased by more than 218% over the course of their ownership.
“I don’t think you’re going to have the growth that I had, where you paid a dollar and you got paid $8 ten years later,” Lasry told Front Office Sports in the latest episode of Portfolio Players.
The stark difference between what Lasry and Edens paid and how much they sold for illustrates how dramatic the pop in NBA team valuations has been over the last decade.
The last five NBA team sales paint a picture of a league with room for unlimited growth. In March, the Boston Celtics were sold for $6.1 billion—a price that’s expected to rise to more than $7 billion when all is said and done since the transaction is being done in two parts. In 2023, Mark Cuban sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks at a reported $3.5 billion valuation, and in June of that same year Michael Jordan sold his Charlotte Hornets at a valuation of about $3 billion. In December 2022, the Phoenix Suns sold for $4 billion. Before that, in 2021, a group led by Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore bought the Minnesota Timberwolves at a $1.5 billion valuation.
From Lasry’s perspective, the Celtics got a bit of a championship bump, something he also experienced when he sold his Bucks stake, as Giannis Antetokounmpo had led the Bucks to a championship less than two years before.
“People always pay a premium for someone who’s a winner,” he says.
Lasry—who admitted that uncertainty related to Antetokounmpo’s future played a role in his decision to sell his Bucks stake—remains a significant investor in the realm of sports through his firm, Avenue Capital Group. The firm, which has a dedicated sports fund, is invested in the likes of 3-on-3 women’s basketball league Unrivaled and The Bay Golf Club in TGL, the indoor golf league launched by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Although he doesn’t expect to keep seeing team valuations soar quite as much as they have been of late, he does think values will keep going up between 10% and 15% a year, thanks in part to the increasing media-rights deals the league has entered into, most recently with the reported $77 billion agreement that kicks in next season.
“It’s not that it’s just going to stop,” he says. “It can level off, it can go up 5%, it may go up 10%. I don’t think it’ll be going up 20% or 30%.”
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