LOS ANGELES – Three days. That is how long it took for the Los Angeles Lakers to change hands for the second time in 14 months. Josh Kushner and Bob Iger agreed Wednesday to purchase the franchise from Mark Walter for $12.5 billion, a price that no professional sports team has ever commanded and one that Walter accepted with unusual speed for a transaction of that magnitude.
The urgency was not accidental. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, working alongside the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are investigating Guggenheim Partners, Walter’s financial conglomerate, in connection with roughly $16 billion in loans extended through related entities to companies in which Walter held interests. Bloomberg first reported the federal inquiry, which centers on two of Walter’s insurance subsidiaries and concerns whether those loan arrangements were properly disclosed to regulators. A whistleblower complaint inside one of the subsidiaries started the inquiry. No charges have been filed. Walter’s representatives have said he “always acted in good faith.”
According to Iger, the transaction came together after he and Kushner learned, through a direct conversation, that Walter might be open to selling. “The deal came together in three days,” Iger said, as CBS Sports reported. The two had spent months exploring the possibility of acquiring an expansion franchise in Las Vegas before pivoting to pursue an established team. The Lakers offered what no expansion franchise can: a global fan base, decades of championship infrastructure, and a market in which winning titles is the baseline expectation.
Magic Johnson, whose relationship with the franchise spans nearly five decades, offered a characteristically definitive assessment. “He will bring championships back to L.A.,” Johnson said of Iger. The pronouncement arrived before any roster evaluation or coaching decision had been announced, which is roughly the standard velocity at which Magic Johnson offers verdicts on Lakers ownership groups.
Kushner, 40, is the founder of Thrive Capital, the New York-based venture firm that has backed Instagram, Spotify, and a range of technology companies across two decades. He holds a minority stake in the Memphis Grizzlies and previously acquired less than five percent of the Miami Heat. His wife, Karlie Kloss, holds a limited partnership interest in the WNBA’s New York Liberty. He is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, who served as a senior White House adviser and whose firm holds a stake in the Saudi PIF-led acquisition of Electronic Arts. The family’s proximity to Republican politics has generated questions about the NBA’s vetting process, which the league has not addressed publicly.
Iger, who served as CEO of The Walt Disney Company for 15 years across two tenures, has described himself as a lifelong basketball devotee with over 40 years of personal familiarity with the Lakers organization. He attended hundreds of games at the Forum and at what is now called Crypto.com Arena. His profile brings both credibility and institutional knowledge to a franchise that has not had a majority owner without deep roots in Los Angeles since Jerry Buss died in 2013.
Jeanie Buss, who took over as controlling owner after her father’s death, will remain team governor for a minimum of five years under the terms of the sale. That provision was written into the original deal Walter struck when he acquired the team for $10 billion in October 2025, and it carries forward intact to the Kushner-Iger group. The Buss family has governed this franchise since Jerry Buss bought it in 1979. Whether Jeanie Buss’s retained governor role translates to retained authority or represents a transitional arrangement is a question the new ownership will eventually have to answer on the record.
The team Kushner and Iger are buying has been remade since it last reached a playoff series. LeBron James departed this summer after eight seasons in gold and purple, signing with the Philadelphia 76ers in a move that ended one chapter at Crypto.com Arena definitively. Luka Doncic, who averaged 33.5 points and 9.4 assists last season and hosted the entire remade roster in Slovenia for a four-day August minicamp, is the unambiguous center of the franchise. Walker Kessler, acquired from the Utah Jazz, is the interior anchor. The Lakers were swept by Oklahoma City in the first round of the 2026 playoffs, and none of the context changes that fact.
The sale price carries its own narrative. Jerry Buss acquired the franchise in 1979 as part of a $67.5 million package deal that included the Forum, the Kings, and other properties; the Lakers were valued at approximately $16 million within that arrangement. Mark Walter paid $10 billion for the franchise alone in October 2025, holding it for less than 14 months before this sale. The $12.5 billion price represents a 25 percent increase in that span. The trajectory from $16 million in 1979 to $12.5 billion in 2026 is the record of a franchise that has appreciated faster than almost any asset in the history of professional sport.
The transaction still requires approval from the NBA’s board of governors, which must vote to admit Kushner and Iger as majority owners. The sale excludes the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and the Los Angeles Dodgers, both of which exist in separate ownership structures from the basketball team. The NBA has not announced a timeline for the vote. What the league is prepared to do about the federal investigation into its outgoing owner, and how that investigation factors into the vetting of its incoming ones, is not information it has offered. The deal happened in three days. The questions it raises will take considerably longer to resolve.
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