Control of one of the highest-profile and most valuable professional sports teams in the world is changing hands.
The Buss family, which has run the Los Angeles Lakers for 46 years, is selling a majority stake in the iconic NBA franchise for a valuation of $10 billion to Mark Walter, who had owned a minority stake, multiple sources confirmed to NBC News.
It would be the second glamorous Southern California franchise in which Walter, the chief executive of TWG Global, has a controlling interest; an ownership group he leads has owned the 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 wrote by email.
Should the NBA approve the sale, it would be the first time since 1979, when Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $67.5 million, that the Buss family no longer controls the team that has won 17 NBA championships, second-most all time, including 11 under the family’s ownership. Upon Jerry Buss' death in 2013, control of the team transferred to a family trust, and his children have run the team since then, led by daughter Jeanie Buss. The family held a 66% stake in the team.
Buss plans to continue to act as the team's governor after sale, which would allow her to vote on league matters at board meetings of NBA owners, the league source said. According to NBA bylaws, Buss would need to retain at least 15% ownership to remain in such a role. An arrangement in which the person who owns a controlling stake of a team does not serve as its governor at league meetings is rare, but not unprecedented.
The $10 billion valuation is all the more remarkable given the team does not own its own arena. Anschutz Entertainment Group owns and operates Crypto.com Arena.
ESPN was first to report news of the sale.
Last year, Forbes ranked the Lakers as the world’s eighth most-valuable team, at $7.1 billion.
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."
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.
