Lakers Sold to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger in Record $12.5 Billion Deal

The Los Angeles Lakers are being sold to a group led by investor Josh Kushner and former Disney chief Bob Iger for a reported $12.5 billion, the largest price ever paid for a US sports franchise.

Vikram Rao

Commentary & Analysis · 13 August 2026

5 min read

A large arena lit in purple and gold at dusk as crowds gather outside

Verified key facts

The Los Angeles Lakers are being sold to an ownership group led by Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a reported $12.5 billion valuation, per Bloomberg, Forbes and NBC News reporting on 12 August.
It is described across those reports as the largest transaction for a US sports franchise, surpassing the roughly $10 billion valuation at which Mark Walter took control of the team last year.
Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, is the younger brother of Jared Kushner; Iger led the Walt Disney Company as chief executive from 2005 to 2020 and again from 2022 to 2026.
The two men had reportedly been pursuing an NBA expansion team in Las Vegas before pivoting to the Lakers, approaching Walter with an offer on the preceding Sunday.
The agreement still requires approval by a vote of the NBA's board of governors, a process that can take several weeks.

A record that resets the market

The reported $12.5 billion price is not just a new high for basketball; it is the largest sum ever attached to a US sports franchise, according to multiple outlets including Bloomberg and Forbes. It comfortably eclipses the benchmarks set by recent NFL sales and arrives barely a year after the Lakers last changed hands at a valuation of about $10 billion. Two data points, twelve months apart, now suggest that the value of a marquee NBA franchise has been rising at a pace that would embarrass most asset classes.

The Lakers occupy a rare tier in that market. The franchise combines seventeen championships and a global brand with a home in the second-largest US media market, and its games remain appointment viewing in an era when little else on linear television is. For buyers, that scarcity is the point: there is only one Lakers, and franchises of that stature come up for sale perhaps once in a generation.

Who the buyers are

Josh Kushner is best known as the founder of Thrive Capital, the venture firm whose portfolio has included some of the most prominent technology companies of the past decade. He is also the younger brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump, though Josh Kushner has largely kept his own public profile anchored in investing rather than politics.

Bob Iger needs less introduction in Los Angeles. The former Walt Disney Company chief executive ran the entertainment giant from 2005 to 2020 and returned for a second stint from 2022 to 2026, overseeing the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm along the way. Reports note that Iger and Kushner had been working together on a bid for an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas before redirecting their attention to the sport's most storied team.

A deal that came together fast

According to reporting cited by Yahoo Sports and NBC News, the pair approached Mark Walter with their offer on the Sunday before the announcement, and the outline of the transaction came together within days. That speed says something about both sides: a bid at $12.5 billion leaves little room for a seller to hesitate, and Walter, who also controls the Los Angeles Dodgers through Guggenheim-linked entities, had taken control of the Lakers only last year.

None of the parties has detailed the structure of the purchase, including how much of the franchise the new group would hold outright or what stake existing investors might retain. Those details typically emerge during the league's review.

The approval process ahead

The sale is not final until the NBA's board of governors votes to approve it, a step that reports say can stretch across multiple weeks. League approval involves vetting of the buyers' finances and ownership structure, and there is no public indication that the process will be anything other than routine here.

Still, the vote matters. The NBA has been deliberate about who is admitted to its ownership ranks, and the sums now involved make each approval a precedent for the next one. A $12.5 billion Lakers transaction becomes the comparable against which every future franchise valuation, expansion fee and minority-stake sale will be measured.

What it means for the franchise

For Lakers fans, the immediate questions are practical: what does new ownership mean for the front office, the payroll and the direction of a roster that has been rebuilding around its young core? None of the reporting so far suggests answers; the deal was struck at speed and the basketball consequences will take longer to surface.

History offers a mixed guide. New owners with deep pockets have sometimes ushered in eras of aggressive spending, while others have prioritised stabilising the business. Iger's entertainment pedigree has already prompted speculation in industry coverage about how the Lakers' media and content ambitions might evolve under a group with his background.

The wider sports-investment wave

The transaction lands in the middle of an unprecedented run of capital into professional sports. Private equity has been admitted, in limited form, into most major US leagues; sovereign and institutional money is reshaping European football; and media companies treat live sport as the last reliably mass audience. Franchise prices have responded accordingly.

A $12.5 billion basketball team would have sounded implausible even five years ago. That it now reads as the market clearing price for the sport's flagship franchise is a measure of how thoroughly sport has been financialised, and of how much scarcity value the biggest brands command.

How the price compares

Benchmarks make the number legible. The most expensive US franchise sales before this deal clustered in the $6 billion range, led by NFL teams whose league enjoys the richest broadcast contracts in sport. The Lakers at $12.5 billion roughly doubles that tier in one transaction, and it prices a single NBA team above the market capitalisation of many S&P 500 companies.

The comparison inside basketball is starker still. The Boston Celtics' sale barely a year earlier, then a record for the league, now looks like a warm-up act. Two Lakers transactions in consecutive years, at $10 billion and then $12.5 billion, imply an appreciation rate that owners across every league will quietly fold into their own asking prices.

What to watch next

The formal steps are the board of governors vote and the disclosure, if any, of the ownership group's full composition. Beyond that, attention will turn to whether Walter's exit from control changes anything for the Dodgers-Lakers relationship in the Los Angeles market, and to what the new valuation does to the expansion-fee conversations the league has been having about Las Vegas, the market Kushner and Iger just left behind.

The NE Times will follow the approval process and the new group's first decisions once the transaction closes.