Venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney chief executive Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter at a record $12.5 billion valuation, a deal that transfers one of sports’ most valuable franchises while leaving Crypto.com Arena and the surrounding L.A. Live district firmly in the hands of landlord AEG.
The Los Angeles Lakers are changing hands for a record $12.5 billion, but the downtown arena that has anchored the franchise for a quarter-century is not part of the deal. Kushner, who runs the venture firm Thrive Capital, and Iger have agreed to acquire the team from Mark Walter, the Guggenheim Partners chief executive and TWG Global principal who bought controlling interest from the Buss family only 14 months earlier, ESPN reported. The price sets a new high-water mark for a U.S. sports franchise and eclipses the roughly $10 billion valuation Walter himself paid in June 2025.
The transaction still requires approval from the NBA’s Board of Governors, a process expected to take several weeks. The board’s next meeting is scheduled for New York next month, according to ESPN. In a joint statement, Kushner and Iger described themselves as lifelong fans honored to become stewards of the franchise.
For real estate observers, the most telling feature of the deal is what it does not include: the building. The Lakers do not own Crypto.com Arena. The venue, opened in 1999 as Staples Center, is owned and operated by Anschutz Entertainment Group, the Los Angeles company controlled by billionaire Philip Anschutz, and the team plays there as a long-term tenant. Kushner and Iger are paying a record sum for a franchise, its brand and its media value, with no underlying real property attached.
That structure leaves AEG in a commanding position regardless of who signs the Lakers’ checks. The company anchors the 27-acre L.A. Live entertainment district around the arena, a mix of hotels, the Peacock Theater, restaurants and offices that AEG developed and continues to own. AEG also retains the arena’s naming-rights economics; Crypto.com agreed to pay a reported $700 million over 20 years for the naming deal in 2021. The Lakers’ sale changes the team’s ownership but not the landlord-tenant relationship that governs the real estate beneath it.
The contrast with Walter’s remaining holdings is sharp. Walter is keeping the Los Angeles Dodgers and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and his control of the Dodgers includes Dodger Stadium and its roughly 300-acre Chavez Ravine parking footprint, one of the largest undeveloped real estate positions in central Los Angeles. The Lakers deal is the opposite proposition: pure enterprise value, no dirt.
Kushner arrives carrying one of real estate’s most recognizable surnames, though his own fortune was built in technology. He founded Thrive Capital, an early backer of companies including OpenAI and Stripe, and holds a minority stake in the Miami Heat. His family’s real estate operation, Kushner Companies, is run separately; his father, Charles Kushner, is the current U.S. ambassador to France, and his brother, Jared Kushner, serves as a U.S. special envoy. Forbes reported in 2024 that the Kushners’ real estate empire had grown larger than the Trumps’, and Kushner Companies has remained active, securing a $515 million loan for a Jersey City luxury tower and winning approvals for an Atlantic City project, according to Multi-Housing News and The Registry’s reporting. Whether any of that development ambition follows Josh Kushner west is an open question the deal raises.
The sale also unfolds against a cloud over the seller. Federal prosecutors and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating insurance vehicles tied to Walter, including Delaware Life Insurance Company and Clear Spring Life and Annuity Company, over disclosures involving billions of dollars in assets and related-party loans connected to affiliated companies, the Los Angeles Times reported. Walter has not been charged, and neither the Lakers nor his other franchises have been accused of wrongdoing. Bloomberg reported that Walter has been seeking cash to pay down loans amid the probe, though there is no public evidence the inquiry forced the sale. On paper, the deal hands him a profit of more than $2 billion in barely a year.
Iger, who stepped down as Disney’s chief executive, has been building his own sports portfolio, becoming controlling owner of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC alongside Willow Bay in 2024. The Lakers acquisition deepens a pattern in which Los Angeles’ marquee sports and entertainment assets continue concentrating among a small circle of billionaires, even as the franchises and the physical real estate that houses them increasingly trade on separate tracks.
If the league approves the transaction next month, Kushner and Iger will control the Lakers but not their home court, a reminder that in the modern economics of professional sports, the trophy and the ground it sits on no longer necessarily change hands together. For AEG and Anschutz, the outcome is a familiar one: a new owner in the building, and the building itself still theirs.
