Josh Kushner and Bob Iger just agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion. That is the most expensive sports team acquisition in history. Let that number sit with you. Twelve and a half billion dollars for a basketball team, in a country where families choose between rent and groceries, where public schools go underfunded, where the city of Los Angeles has a homelessness crisis that grows by the year.
Angela George (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia CommonsThe seller is Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners and owner of the Dodgers, who bought the Lakers just last year for $10 billion from the Buss family. He held the team for ten months and is walking away with a $2.5 billion markup. Walter, it should be noted, is currently under federal investigation by the SEC and Manhattan prosecutors examining potential insurance fraud tied to his financial empire. So the Lakers are passing from one billionaire under federal scrutiny to two more billionaires with their own entanglements.
Tim Wang (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsKushner founded Thrive Capital, a venture firm that got in early on Instagram