Topline
Billionaire investor Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger reached an agreement to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for more than $12 billion, a record-setting price tag for a U.S. sports franchise, ESPN reported Wednesday.
The legacy NBA franchise was transferred from the Buss family last year at a $10 billion valuation.
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Key Facts
Kushner and Iger acquired the Lakers from Mark Walter, who purchased a controlling interest in the team from the Buss family last year at a $10 billion valuation, ESPN reported, citing multiple sources.
That eclipses the largest price ever paid for control of a U.S. sports franchise, beating out Walter’s purchase last year and the $9.6 billion paid by billionaire Vinod Khosla for the Seattle Seahawks earlier this year.
The pair told ESPN in a statement they are “deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers,” and Walter called his brief ownership an “extraordinary investment.”
Forbes ranked the Lakers as the second-most-valuable NBA franchise last year at $10 billion, ranking directly behind the Golden State Warriors ($11 billion) and ahead of the New York Knicks ($9.75 billion) and Los Angeles Clippers ($7.5 billion).
forbes valuation
Josh Kushner, the younger brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and fellow billionaire investor Jared Kushner, has an estimated net worth of $5.2 billion as of Wednesday. He founded and runs the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, which backed early startups like Instagram, Spotify, Stripe and OpenAI. Walter, the CEO of investment firm Guggenheim Partners, has a fortune estimated at $7.3 billion. Walter’s Guggenheim Baseball Management group owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, which sold for more than $2 billion in 2012.
key background
Sports franchises have emerged as an equity class among billionaires in recent years. Former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban acquired a minority stake in the Athletics in July, while Tom Dundon, who acquired a majority stake in the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018, bought the Portland Trail Blazers for $4 billion in March. Walter’s deal for the Lakers followed a $6.1 billion purchase of the rival Boston Celtics by a Bill Chisholm-led group in 2025. Earlier this week, a consortium of investors that includes Amazon’s Jeff Bezos reportedly neared a deal to buy a roughly one-third stake in Liverpool F.C., after Bezos was previously linked to a bid for the Seahawks.