The Buss family, owners of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, is ceding majority ownership of one of the world’s most iconic sports franchises to TWG Global CEO Mark Walter at an eye-popping $10 billion enterprise valuation.
ESPN was the first to report on the development.
Per ESPN, there is no bigger brand in the NBA – and possibly all of North American sports – than the Lakers, whose purple and gold colors are worn around the world and are synonymous with some of the sport’s biggest names. Since Dr Jerry Buss purchased the team in 1979 for $67.5 million, the Lakers have won 11 titles and won more than 60% of their games, both the best of any NBA franchise over that span.
When Dr. Buss passed away in 2013, ownership of the Lakers was passed along to his six children in a trust, with each owning an equal share. Jeanie Buss serves as team president and chairman of the board, but any sale of the franchise would need a majority vote of the Buss children to be approved.
For the record, Jeanie Buss is also the co-owner and promoter of the US women’s professional wrestling promotion Women of Wrestling.
Last year, Forbes ranked the Lakers as the world’s eighth most-valuable team, at $7.1 billion.
The Lakers purchase marks the second big acquisition of a glamorous Southern California sports franchise made by Walter – an ownership group he leads has owned the Major League Baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers since 2012.
“Mark Walter is entering into an agreement to acquire additional interests in the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, of which he has been a stakeholder since 2021,” a spokesperson for Walter confirmed to multiple US media outlets.
Walter joined the Lakers ownership group in 2021, when Philip Anschutz sold a 27% stake of the team to him and a Dodgers co-owner, Todd Boehly.
“Job well done to my sister Jeanie Buss for striking an incredible deal and picking the right person to carry on the @Lakers legacy and tradition of winning — Mark Walter, my business partner and friend!” Magic Johnson, the former Lakers superstar who is part of groups with Walter that own the Dodgers and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, posted on X.
Johnson added, “Mark Walter is the best choice and will be the best caretaker of the Laker brand,” and he added in a later post that “Lakers fans should be ecstatic.”
Per NBC, the sale resets the bar for the value of a pro sports team. The proposed $6.1 billion sale of the NBA’s Boston Celtics, which has yet to be formally completed, previously held the record for NBA franchises.
In the past decade, as NBA teams changed hands to owners with fortunes in technology and finance, the Lakers remained one of the NBA’s last family businesses, with a relatively modest-sized front office and support staff. Walter could inject spending power into the team in a repeat of how his Guggenheim Baseball Group has transformed the Dodgers from a team that filed for bankruptcy in 2011, a year before their sale, to a financial juggernaut and two-time World Series champion backed by an $8.3 billion media rights deal with Time Warner Cable.
