The Lakers have a new ownership group, and it's not the one anybody expected to be talking about again this soon. Barstool Sports confirmed the news Wednesday afternoon: Josh Kushner and Bob Iger are buying the Lakers for a record-breaking $12.5 billion.
Here's the part that's actually breaking brains: this is the SECOND time the Lakers have changed hands in about 14 months. The Buss family sold their majority stake to Mark Walter last June at a then-record $10 billion valuation, ending an ownership era that stretched back to 1979. Now Walter is already cashing out, pocketing roughly a $2.5 billion profit on a team he barely got to unpack boxes in.
A reaction clip posted alongside the confusion over how fast the ownership carousel is spinning.
That's the sentiment running through the entire Barstool timeline right now — total whiplash. Nobody had the Lakers changing hands twice before most fans even adjusted to Walter's regime, and the timeline reflected it. Phill summed up the general vibe of a fanbase watching a $10 billion transaction get flipped like a stock trade.
Since when do teams get sold in a matter of minutes?
The buyers are worth knowing too. Josh Kushner, 41, is the founder of venture capital firm Thrive Capital and co-founder/vice chairman of Oscar Health. Bob Iger, 75, spent parts of two decades running Disney before handing the reins to Josh D'Amaro earlier this year. Neither is a stranger to swinging big checks, but a $12.5 billion valuation puts the Lakers in a stratosphere no North American sports franchise has touched.
The number itself is what's making jaws drop across sports media, not just Barstool. A $12.5 billion Lakers valuation now dwarfs traditional American sports royalty — Phill pointed out that it leaves a franchise like the Yankees looking almost cheap by comparison, which says everything about how fast NBA valuations have exploded.
The Yankees being worth less than the Lakers is kinda shocking?
Reports indicate Kushner and Iger approached Walter with the offer just days ago, and the whole thing came together stunningly fast for a deal of this magnitude. For a franchise with this much history — Magic, Kobe, Shaq, LeBron, five championship banners this century alone — getting bought and sold twice inside 14 months is uncharted territory. The only question left is how long this ownership group sticks around before the next $12.5 billion offer shows up.