Lakers Sale Exposes the Risks of Investor Ownership

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Mark Walter should be precisely the kind of owner the National Basketball Association wants. He is spectacularly wealthy and — as he’s proved as the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers — he’s willing to spend big to win.

Yet less than a year after taking control of the Los Angeles Lakers, Walter is selling the team at a $12.5 billion valuation.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After the league’s Board of Governors approved the sale to Walter in October, Commissioner Adam Silver said he expected Walter to be a “committed steward” of the storied franchise.

Silver’s faith is a bet being made across professional sports. Leagues increasingly embrace owners with the qualities of successful investors: take risks, maximize returns. Stewards, on the other hand, are supposed to think long-term and occasionally put the league’s interests ahead of their own.

Walter’s handling of his two Los Angeles teams captures the dilemma. The rapid sale of the Lakers shows how quickly an investor can leave; his leadership at the Dodgers shows how the aggressive pursuit of wins can strain a league.

The tension is impossible to ignore, considering how sports ownership worked for most of the modern era. Many franchises were local institutions owned by individuals and families for whom a team was as much a legacy as an investment. The running joke for years was that the fastest way to make a small fortune in sports was to start with a large one.

Those economics created a different kind of ownership. Teams were often held for decades and closely identified with the families that controlled them. The expectation that an owner should be a steward emerged from that world.

That world is disappearing. Team values have soared as live sports have become more valuable in a world of endless on-demand entertainment. Broadcasters and streaming platforms drive rights fees higher, leagues have become smart at building global audiences, and franchises have expanded into real estate development.

As a result, teams once bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars now go for billions. Not many people can afford those prices, but for the leagues that’s a nice problem to have. And to address it, they’ve opened the door to institutional money like private equity.

That influx of capital has made investors like Walter even more valuable. In 2025, his purchase of a controlling interest in the Lakers at a $10 billion valuation was welcomed by the NBA, in part because it established a new benchmark for what franchises are worth.

But there’s a catch. As sports becomes an established asset class, owners behave like investors. In Walter’s case, it took less than a year for him to find buyers willing to value the Lakers for $2.5 billion more than he did when he took control. From an investor’s perspective, that’s rational behavior.

For the Lakers, however, the cost is another leadership transition before Walter’s first one is even complete, bringing new uncertainty for the front office, players and fans.

Walter’s ownership of the Dodgers highlights another problem. There, he spent heavily on stars such as Shohei Ohtani and helped build baseball’s dominant franchise.

That’s been great for Dodgers fans (and no owner should be criticized for trying to win). But a league is a collective, and its health depends on more than its richest teams. Intentionally or not, Walter’s spending has intensified baseball’s fight over payroll disparities and competitive balance. As a result, MLB owners are now pushing a salary cap against the wishes of the players, putting the league on course for an ugly labor fight.

That’s not Walter’s fault alone; baseball has long operated without the salary guardrails of other leagues. But his wealth enables him to stress the system more than most owners.

Financial empires create another risk. When something goes wrong in one part of the portfolio, it can quickly become the team’s problem.

Walter is now being investigated by the Department of Justice over dealings in his insurance businesses. Prosecutors and regulators are examining more than $20 billion in loans that flowed from his insurers to other parts of his vast business network. He has not been accused of wrongdoing.

As Walter seeks to raise money and unwind some of his investments, he agreed to sell the Lakers to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner. (Walters is also exploring the sale of his stake in Chelsea FC.)

Kushner, it’s worth noting, is the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Against the backdrop of the federal investigation, the relationship has fueled inevitable speculation about a political connection to the sale, though the White House has denied one.

The broader point, however, isn’t speculative at all. Financial empires expose their owners to political and regulatory pressures that have little to do with sports. It’s hard to be a good steward when the waters are that choppy.

None of this means that teams and leagues should stop wanting wealthy and ambitious owners. Truth is, they have no choice. But they should be more honest with themselves and their fans about the bargain they are making, and ultimately what they are giving up in return.