Who is Mark Walter, the billionaire Dodgers owner buying LA Lakers from Buss family?
The iconic franchise has won 17 NBA titles, and is second only after the Boston Celtics.
The Buss family will sell its majority stake to Walters, who also owns the LA Dodgers baseball franchise. This comes after he purchase a stake in the franchise in 2021, and agreed to get 'right of refusal' if a majority stake was ever put up for sale, according to a Bloomberg report.
Notably, the Buss family purchased the Lakers for $67.5 million in 1979; and Jeanie Buss, who has helmed the team since her father Jerry Buss died in 2013, will continue to hold that role, the report said.
Notably, the $10 billion valuation is a record breaker — exceeding that $6.1 billion price tag for the Celtics in March 2025, when it was bought by a group led by Bill Chisholm, as per the Bloomberg report.
Outside of the NBA, the next largest sale was the $6.05 billion deal for the National Football Leagues's Washington Commanders, bought by Josh Harris, co-founder of Apollo Management, the BB report added.
Other expensive deals in the US sports space this year include, the NBA's Phoenix Suns being purchased by Mat Ishbia for $4 billion; the Dallas Mavericks' $3.5 billion sale to the Adelson family; and former NBA superstar Michael Jordan's $3 billion sale of the Charlotte Hornets.
Worth $12.5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index (BBI), Mark Walter is the CEO of Guggenheim Partners LLC, a financial services firm with over $325 billion in assets.
In sports, he is the CEO of holding company TWG Global, which owns baseball sports franchise the LA Dodgers, and the Women's NBA team LA Sparks; besides owning the newly formed Cadillac Formula One team, the Billie Jean King Cup tennis tournament and the professional women's hockey league, according to reports by AFP and Bloomberg.
He is also part of the ownership group of English Premier League (EPL) football club Chelsea, the AFP report added.
(With inputs from Bloomberg and AFP)
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