By Joe Vardon, Mike Vorkunov, Fabian Ardaya and Andy McCullough
The Buss family has agreed in principle to sell the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sporting brands in the world, to financier Mark Walter in a deal that values the team at a global record $10 billion, league sources told The Athletic.
The sale, which is not yet finalized, could eventually value the team at $12 billion, according to one source with knowledge of the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the transaction. That would be far more than the $6.1 billion valuation for the Boston Celtics when they were sold in March.
Even at the lower number, the sale would be the largest for any sports team, and it will affect not only how competitive the Lakers can be in the NBA, but will also impact the other storied Los Angeles sports team for whom Walter is the controlling owner, the Dodgers.
Jeanie Buss, 63, will remain governor after the sale is complete, a league source said. Her father, Jerry Buss, purchased the Lakers in 1979 and the following year the Lakers were NBA champions, the first of 10 titles they would win under his ownership. With stars like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and especially Magic Johnson, the “Showtime” Lakers of the 1980s helped to reinvigorate the league’s popularity and made the franchise one of the most popular in all of sports.
Jeanie Buss has been team governor and controlling owner since 2017, four years after her father died and a legal dispute among his children was settled allowing her to take control.
The pending sale was first reported by ESPN.
Walter, 65, is chief executive of Guggenheim Partners, a global financial services firm with more than $325 billion in assets. He led the group that bought the Dodgers in 2012 for $2 billion. The franchise has won two World Series titles since and operated as one of the best organizations in professional sports.
Walter first took a stake in the Lakers in 2021 when he and Todd Boehly bought a 27 percent share of the franchise, then valued at about $5 billion, and it included a right of first negotiation, according to one source with knowledge of the deal.
Buss bought the Lakers for about $68 million from Jack Kent Cooke, the former owner, in a complex deal that also gave him the Los Angeles Kings and the Forum. The price of the Lakers has gone up drastically since then.
The Lakers have won 17 NBA championships – second only to the Boston Celtics – and have at multiple points in their storied existence employed the “face” of the league, or a player so important professionally and culturally that he transcends any box score. From Wilt, to Kareem, to Magic to Shaq to Kobe to LeBron, the Lakers added to that impressive list by trading for perennial MVP candidate Luka Dončić last February.
One of those legends, Johnson, who was part of the group with Walter who purchased the Dodgers, expressed his excitement about the Lakers sale.
“Laker fans should be (ecstatic),” Johnson posted to X. “A few things I can tell you about Mark – he is driven by winning, excellence, and doing everything the right way. AND he will put in the resources needed to win! I can understand why Jeanie sold the team to Mark Walter because they are just alike.”
James, who is 40 and has played 22 seasons, is said to be comfortable with the sale – though he is nearing the end of his career.
Dončić, meanwhile, is 26 and eligible for a $229 million contract extension. While paying multiple players a maximum salary has never been an issue for the Lakers – spending outside of the roster occasionally has been problematic for a team with such a strong brand.
The Buss family fortune was largely tied to the Lakers, whereas most owners in the NBA today made their money outside of the sport. The Lakers have, in the past, been more frugal when it comes to paying coaches, front-office executives, buying draft picks in the second round, and other ancillary but important functions for running a world-class organization.
“I’m really excited – now the Lakers will be able to spend like they should spend,” said one league source with ties to the franchise.
Walter’s group, Guggenheim Baseball Management, bought the Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012 from owner Frank McCourt, who had driven the club into bankruptcy. Walter out-bid a $2 billion offer from Steve Cohen, the future owner of the New York Mets, to secure the club. The group was fronted by Johnson, with former Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals executive Stan Kasten designated as the team president. The Guggenheim investors included film producer Peter Guber and financier Todd Boehly.
Walter sunk millions into rebuilding the team’s roster, improving its internal infrastructure and renovating Dodger Stadium. The club has not missed the postseason under his guidance, with championships in 2020 and 2024. Along the way, Walter added more sports assets to his portfolio. In 2014, he purchased a stake in the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. He owns the Professional Women’s Hockey League and has begun investing in motorsports.
“Speaking from (the perspective of) a Dodger employee, he’s very competitive,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s going to do everything he can to produce a championship-caliber team every single year and make sure the city feels proud of the Lakers and the legacy that they’ve already built with the Buss family.”
In 2021, Walter and Boehly added a stake in the Lakers. A year later, Walter joined a Boehly-led group, BlueCo, that overtook Chelsea F.C. The group also owns the French soccer club Strasbourg.
The Dodgers under Guggenheim’s management have seemingly taken their revenues to a different stratosphere with the acquisition of Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million deal in December 2023, dramatically shifting their business opportunities abroad as the Dodgers have opened their the last two seasons in Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo, Japan. They committed approximately $1.4 billion in new salaries in the same offseason where they signed Ohtani, and backed that up with a substantial investment this past winter. Their payroll has remained among the game’s highest, with an expected investment of nearly half a billion dollars in the 2025 Dodgers alone between payroll and expected luxury tax payments.
“Our business is very healthy,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said this past November.
Ohtani signaled his desire to join the Dodgers was in part because of the ownership group’s investment and stability, attaching himself at the hip to Walter and Friedman through a “key man clause” – meaning that Ohtani could opt out of his deal if either left the organization. With Walter’s purchase of the Lakers, it appears he’s not leaving any time soon.
(Photo: Jevone Moore / Getty Images)
