Amid rising interest and value in all things surrounding sports and TV/streaming, one of the biggest sports brand teams — the Los Angeles Lakers — are being sold for the second time in less than a year.
With the $12.5 billion deal, former long-time Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner will own a controlling interest sold to them from financier/investment manager Mark Walter. It will be the highest priced ever for a U.S. professional sports team — topping a deal for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks’s $9.6 billion price tag made earlier this year.
Under the terms of the deal a year ago, Walter bought a controlling interest in the Lakers, totaling 85%, from the Buss family (Jerry and Jeanie Buss) for around $10 billion. Walters and his partner already owned a 27% minority stake.
Overall, the most current reading of Lakers’ annual revenue, according to Forbes, is $551 million, and $185 million of that comes from local cable TV/streaming platform Spectrum SportsNet, according to Sports Business Journal.
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The Lakers also get around $110 million a year from their share of the NBA national TV platforms including ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock, and Amazon PrimeVideo.
Sponsorship revenue for the Los Angeles Lakers climbed 15% for the 2025-2026 NBA season, according to SponsorUnited. Total NBA team sponsorship revenue totalled $1.8 billion across 2,452 deals.
The Lakers are among the top five of the fastest-growing NBA teams when it comes to sponsorship revenue — behind the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Phoenix Suns.
The largest of these deals included a major arena naming rights deal for Crypto.com, with an estimated value of $35 million — $700 million over 20 years.
The jersey patch partnership with South Korean food brand Bibigo totaled $20 million/year. They are being replaced with a bigger deal — Albert, a personal finance app — for the 2026-2027 TV season, valued at more than $30 million.
This story has been updated.
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