Just 14 months ago, Jeanie Buss and family sold their majority stake in the Lakers to Mark Walter at a $10 billion valuation. This week came the sudden news that Walter has now sold the team to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 billion.
The word “whiplash” comes to mind. The speed of the sale has raised eyebrows across the sports world—and questions.
It will take some getting used to for Lakers fans. It’s been 46 years of the Buss family and then 10 months of Mark Walter, who was already familiar as a Lakers minority owner and a Dodgers co-owner. Now Kushner, just 41 and the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Iger, 75, the longtime Disney CEO who only just finally stepped down in February, will be the faces of Lakers ownership—although Iger claimed he intends to honor Walter’s promise to Jeanie Buss to let her continue as the team’s governor for five years.
As rapid reactions from Wednesday have crystallized, the question overshadowing everything is why Walter sold so suddenly, and what it means for the rest of his extensive sports portfolio—and for pro sports team prices from here.
1. Why did Walter sell? Pro teams don’t get flipped this fast.
