4:11 pm: Walter has agreed to buy the Lakers at a valuation of approximately $10 billion, the largest sum ever for a professional sports team, Charania reports (via Twitter).
3:52 pm: The Buss family has reached an agreement to sell its majority stake in the Lakers to Mark Walter, sources tell Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link).
Walter, 65, is the CEO and chairman of TWG Global, a diversified holding company.
Walter, who also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers (MLB) and Los Angeles Sparks (WNBA), among sports investments, is currently a minority owner of the Lakers, having purchased a 27% stake in 2021 alongside Todd Boehly.
According to Charania, current governor Jeanie Buss will continue to serve in that role after the sale is finalized.
As Ramona Shelburne of ESPN tweets, Walter earned the right of first refusal to purchase majority control of the Lakers in 2021 when he bought his minority stake. The Buss family owns about 66% of the team, per Shelburne.
Longtime owner Jerry Buss purchased the Lakers for $67.5MM back in 1979, according to Charania, who notes (via Twitter) that his children inherited majority control when Buss passed away in 2013.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps believes the Lakers’ sale price will exceed the Celtics’ record-breaking valuation of $6.1 billion (Twitter link). Boston’s new ownership group is expected to be approved sometime in June or July.
Mark Walter really couldn’t have bought out Jerry Reinsdorf considering this guy lives in Lincoln Park???? SMH
raz427 The Lakers are THE premier franchise in the NBA (due to being in LA.)
With the explosive global growth of the NBA, it projects to be the most valuable franchise of any sport in North America, if not the world, in 6-7 years.
Expect the team’s valuation to double to $16B by that time with the investment this ownership group will make.
The Bulls are a nice franchise, but this is a much bigger opportunity.
That’s BS Aristotle. I’m sorry but Bulls brand is just as popular as Laker brand. If you go to various parts of the world, you’ll see a Bulls 23 jersey more often than not. Just bc we haven’t won anything since AOL days doesn’t mean that we’re not a big opportunity as well. 3rd largest market behind NY/LA. The history speaks for itself when it comes to the Chicago Bulls.
FWIW: I was more upset that he’s from the city and lives here but Jerry wants to keep it in the family. We’re doomed for all of eternal glory with Reindsorf’s owning this franchise.
Reinsdorff’s are TRASH!!! They have the city of Chicago looking, feeling, and acting like trash. These league’s need to make sure anyone who has that last name, is absent of anything to do with running ANYTHING!!!
The bulls franchise is almost 2b less valuable than the Lakers, it’s really easy to look these things up. Jordan might sell but the bulls beyond a few moments with Rose haven’t been relevant in nearly 30 years.
Bulls only became popular because of MJ. Lakers brand has been here for centuries, lol
“Centuries” when the life time of NBA is less than a century lol maybe youre talking about the actual lakes they’re named after?
Laker literally became popular in the 80’s and Bulls in the 90’s
raz427 It has very little to do with brand recognition. It has to do with market, both the size of the LA market itself (in both number and affluence) and the reach of LA media, which is worldwide.
Help me recall all those Chicago free agent signings over the years, please.
LA teams dominate the free agency market. LeBron, Kahwi, Shaq. Wayne Gretzky. Shohei Ohtani. David Beckham. Being an SF Bay Area sports fan means a lifetime of tears as we watch our rival city gifted by free agents year after year.
Jerry won’t sell the Bulls he’s said as much to the dismay of every Chicagoan.
@raz
You really can’t compare the Lakers vs the Bulls. that #23 jersey is world renowned nevertheless of MJ. Take him away and that franchise has virtually nothing. no chips and no universally known stars. Drose and Pip can’t carry the weight
Right, but the Knicks…Starks, no chip, Ewing, no chip…Melo, ha. Brunson, no chip or coach. You have the biggest buffoon of all in Dolan.
If Jerry Jones were to sell the Cowboys he would get at least $14 billion. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yankees would go for $10 billion as well.
The NFL is not a global sport, although bigger than NBA at this moment. Annual revenues growing at 21% per year.
NBA has massive worldwide growth, growing at 32%, spurred by international revenue. NBA projected to pass NFL in early 2030’s.
Golden State is just as valuable
I hate to break it to you, but your favorite team is valued higher than the Lakers. link to hoopshype.com
No, just wait till LeBron and his buddy start their league. A lot of guys are gonna sign one year deals so they can go to that League because they’ll be given ownership.
I feel you raz.., sure would be nice to have a wealthy owner who doesn’t need the proceeds from the team to finance their lifestyle.
Warriors fans have been fortunate that’s the case for the last 10 years with Joe Lacob.
He’s wealthy through other ventures so the cash the Warriors make can be poured back into the team.
Hopefully the bulls find a guy like that soon. Huge market like Chicago deserves a big money guy like that.
I’m done hoping Gary lmao I’m a bad free agent signing from a nervous breakdown from a basketball perspective. Lmao
Didn’t think the bus family was serious on selling the team. This would be interesting and move forward with LeBron. James
Well when you are being offered $4 billion over valuation, that’s pretty hard to give up, especially if they are letting you remain in control of the team in the front office.
Those sparks shares are going to pay off
Ha ha! Suck it Jebron Lames!
What does this have to do with him?
They’re done with him. They know the fans hate him. Jeannie og plan was to sell to him when he retired. Not happening now. That’s the over pay.
WTF are you talking about LMAO… The current buyer is a minority owner and had the right of first refusal on a sale. How was the plan to sell to LeBron? He can’t be on your mind that much that you hallucinate about him, can he?!
Great news for Lakers fans, terrible news for the other 29 teams.
The Buss Mom and Pop Shop prevented the franchise from taking advantage of the team’s intrinsic market advantages.
Walter will overhaul the Lakers front office in a hurry.
lol
With this new CBA can they really do much more than any of the other big market teams? Like no team can really stay in the second apron for a prolonged period, and you cant do the baseball thing and just keep signing guys further and further into the tax.
Chapman, the point is that the Lakers as a business are currently under-performing relative to their market, and that’s because of sub-standard ownerhip. It’s about fully exploiting the advantages of LA, which the Buss kids did not.
Walter/TWG not only have the resources and wherewithall to increase the Lakers revenues, but also to attract superstar players. Superstars want to be in the big markets, but none as much as LA. The Dodgers are living proof: Walter/TWG signed Shohei Ohtani for $700M, and they have become the leading MLB franchise largely by owning the free agent market.
LA is already the preferred NBA player destination. The big superstars make an increasingly greater share of their income off-court than on in the big markets. Shaq and LeBron didn’t come as free agents for the weather. The Lakers knew Luka would sign because it’s LA.
TWG/Walter increases the unfair LA advantage. Ongoing dialogue with the agencies representing Anthony Edwards, Giannis, Jokic, etc will be much greater than it was with the Buss family.
Ohtani’s contract is not as big as it might seem. New York is still a bigger destination.
A problem with that might be that the best players in this league are now all foreigners (Jokic, Giannis, Luka, Shai, and likely Victor in the future), and they don’t behave like American players. None of them are Rich Paul’s clients.
You don’t see them acting and making moves like Jimmy Butlers and Paul Georges of this world.
Peter- Every major sports agency has been pushing its stars to NYC and LA since the 1980’s. There is too much money to be made — more than on the court for the superstars.
Players vary in their attitudes towards being in large markets, but they tend to care much more about income and future business opportunities by 30 yrs old, when they have families. Most athletes evolve into businesspeople.
Soto didn’t sign because of the money. He left millions on the table.
@Peter don’t fool yourself. Giannis is a whisper away from asking out of Milwaukee.
You just happened to name guys whose franchise hasn’t given them reason to say I can’t win here… But that’s definitely what the Giannis talk is about, bucks trying to get in front of a possible trade demand
Im pretty sure Giannis would very much like to be a one team star. I dont know what his breaking point is for changing that, but I wouldnt be shocked if we have to at least get into the season and let him see it before he might really decide to go.
The Dodgers don’t own the MLB free agent market. The Dodgers are good because of their farm system.
So from what I have heard the team is kinda cheap with FO staff and training facilities so things like that can be improved with cash. I almost feel like they missed out on the best opportunities to take advantage of the new owners though. Like if they had bought the team in 04 LAL could have been much better.
Does the LA market really help the way it used too? I wonder since most top players never see FA anymore. Like it probably helps with the vet min guys, or getting a lower tier FA to take a below market deal, but the days of star FA seems to be over. Like I think the 19 offseason was the last time multiple major players signed with new teams. PG13 was prolly an outlier because LAC really bungled the negotiations, but I dont know the next max FA contract we will see.
> Does the LA market really help the way it used too?
More.
I mean its a star driven league, and your only getting stars in trade. Luka going there was a weird circumstance that had little to do with LA and a lot to do with Nicos long relationship with Pelinka and AD.
@chapman , I’m surprised you don’t understand the extent that being in LA (or NYC) amplifies the earnings potential of superstar athletes. The biggest superstars make more money from off-field interests than player contracts, and that’s increasing with time.
You’re missing that even if mega-superstars are traded, as opposed to being a free agent, they usually control the destination(s).
It wasn’t a “weird circumstance that had little to do with LA” that landed Luka in LA. It was one of a small number of teams that Luka would sign a long-term deal with.
It makes you more peripheral money yes, but for your avg non Steph/Bron type the endorsement money isnt insane income compared to the BB related. Also CA is a high tax state so you balance it out some.
Even when they are guiding it some its usually a short list not a list of one, and some teams wont accommodate the player.
It remains to be seen if Luka extends. But the deal had nothing to do with that. They didnt talk to Luka or get his sign off. I think he only learned about the deal prolly 30 min before we all did. I think even knowing he would walk Pelinka still does it, and all the reporting is that Nico only talked to Pelinka, cause he knew Pelinka, and knew AD well from years of being his Nike rep, and was solely focused on AD. Like LA having AD got them Luka not being in LA.
Chapman, you’re missing the key point about the deal: LA was one of 2-3 places they could have traded Luka without telling him. Everyone — both Pelinka and Nico — knew he’d sign there. And he will.
> for your avg non Steph/Bron type the endorsement
> money isnt insane income compared to the BB
> related.
Agree, the top 5-10 most marketable superstars benefit the most, but the majority of NBA players want to be in LA.
Are you aware that 60%-70% of active NBA players have an off-season residence in LA? Another 10-20% have residences in Las Vegas. That’s for a number of reasons other than what we’ve discussed, but all of it helps the LA teams.
The new ownership just strengthens the advantage the Lakers have of being in LA.
Like the Warriors have been doing for 10 years?
Jeanie Buss was the worst thing to happen to the Lakers.
I don’t expect her to last in that role for long.
She could hire yes-men like Pelinka, whom the rest of the league hates dealing with. Likely because he’s such a smug, high-strung personality. Pelinka always had a court jester aura. The franchise will do much better with a career executive type in that role, rather than a former agent who has very few friendships in the league.
I wouldn’t care whether Jeanie Buss was a terrible team owner with all that extra cashola coming in as she surely is marriage material lol.. 😂
I thought she married that comedian guy from Jerry Maguire? The blonde guy? Forget his name, he was pretty funny for a while but now he’s just an old comic?
She’s not doing it for the money.
It’s a common practice with an ownership change in a sports franchise — generates goodwill, PR, keeps existing employees comfortable, etc.
Everybody knows it’s symbolic, nothing more.
Yeah , very common to have a $10 billion symbolic gesture….
There’s no doubt that Buss sold the team for the money, her staying on as governor is the symbolic gesture. There’s no way you pay $10 billion for a team and give someone else the final decision on anything.
aristotle is a Knicks expert, a Warriors expert, a Celtics expert, a Raptors expet, a Cavs expert, a Mavs expert, a Spurs expert, now a Lakers expert.
He is also a clown expert.
This aristotle kid keeps pulling rabbits out of his behind. Is the kid serious with what he has been spewing here?
Jeanie’s siblings despised her for taking the throne of the team and wanted the money. Now they get their money and nobody in the family will ever speak to each other again.
Walter will transfer the Dodgers blueprint over to the Lakers and within 5 years they could go on a 20-year run of contention.
The Buss family was in shambles after papa passed away, so this result is definitively what the league’s other owners wanted.
Jeanie remaining governor makes little sense in the long run, so she’ll remain in the role another season and then “retire/step away” and spend the rest of her life on vacation.
I knew there was something in the works when Magic was talking about “I should get back into NBA ownership” when he was with Stephen A last week
Thats 10 billion that could go to charity…smdh
Who the hell is Charity?
And, why do you think she deserves $10bil?
Charity was a horse in Let it Ride
Wow… this is more interesting than trade speculation, by far. Please tell me Rob Pelinka is out of a job…
Overpay for washed up franchise.
You win the internet for the dumbest comment today.
There needs to be nominations and votes on that kind of stuff, Senioreditor. I can understand why you did it – the comment’s gonna get a lot of attention – but you’re jumping the gun a bit, right? There are likely commenters on here who probably read the majority of the articles/comment sections on a daily basis; I say we tap into this wealth of knowledge/hot heads and maybe all collectively do something like a “dumbest hoops rumors comment of the week/month”, as voted on by HR readers.
Well you can’t say no to free money. Overpay
link to google.com
Well he owns LA now with Dodgers and Lakers
Anyone else think he looks like Doug Peterson with a larger head?
Not an NBA fan.
When I heard the Lakers were sold for the largest price in sports history, I thought…”that sounds right.”
Amazing brand.
We are in the sports team conglomerate era. Just look at the group that owns the Red Sox. They make a giant splash spending on players for Liverpool then trade off Devers and his $250 million contract. Or look at the Glazer family extracting all that money after Manchester United and spending it on their other teams.
10 billion???
It only looks like an “overpay” when you don’t know the billions in profit these guys have already made.
Sorry to be obnoxious, but the $10 billion is the valuation, not the actual cash he is spending. If he bought all of the Buss’s 66% ownership that would be 6.6bill he is paying. Since he already owns 27% he may not be buying the full 66% but just enough to get to a majority position. So he could be spending 2.4 billion for 24% to get to 51% total ownership. It is a technical point, but something to be aware of when these transactions happen. And it is still a ton of money.
Would it be 9.5 without Luka?
Luka and LeBron do makeup a portion of the value. They sell merch and put butts in the seat. The Lakers are iconic though, the team would still hold a ton of value if both were to retire tomorrow.
They have an insane local TV deal that pays them more in a couple days than MEM makes in a whole season.
Now perhaps a legit front office will be installed. No more emabarrasing Buss family drama.
Do we know why Jeannie is selling?
$10 billion reasons i supposed😉
Hope you don’t mind if I make an educated guess? I’m sure you’re looking for facts but I don’t know if those have come out yet.
I think number one is 10 billion reasons. That’s a huge number.
Number two, I don’t think they have much money outside of the Lakers and everything having to do with them.
Buss sold his real estate empire to Donald Sterling in the 70s so he could buy the Lakers.
Another reason could be that nice wad of cash as the siblings get older and it’s nice too be able to make different financial decisions now.
The glamour of LA and being a laker owner and going to games has maybe waned a little? Now the kids can get creative with their money instead of it being tied up?
You got it Gary.