Dr. Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers from Jack Kent Cook in 1979 for $67.5 million.
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 12: President of the Los Angeles Lakers Jeanie Buss speaks during a banner unveiling ceremony for the Los Angeles Lakers 2020 NBA Championship before the game against the Houston Rockets at Staples Center on May 12, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
After the single-most winning run by an ownership group, the Buss family is reportedly selling the majority share of the Los Angeles Lakers, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. With a valuation of $10 billion, the sale will be the biggest in American sports history.
Mark Walter, CEO of TWD Global, will purchase their share of the team for the historic amount. Lakers governor, Jeanie Buss, will remain in her role going forward.
Dr. Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers from Jack Kent Cook in 1979 for $67.5 million. After he died in 2013, the Buss Family Trust officially took ownership of the team, in which his daughter, Jeanie, has been in the leading role since.
Per Charania, Walter has previous experience in sports ownership, controlling minority shares of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Sparks, and other sports enterprises.
Buss Family Leading Lakers To Historic Success
When Buss originally bought the team, his purchase included both the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and the Los Angeles Forum. The Lakers already had a history of winning titles, becoming champions five each year from 1949 to 1954 during their time in Minneapolis. Before Buss, they went to the Finals nine times from 1959 to 1972, winning in the last year, after seven series losses to the Boston Celtics.
In Buss’ first season owning the team, Los Angeles selected Magic Johnson in the 1979 draft. He, paired alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, led the Lakers to the championship in that first 1980 season. They did so again in 1982, 1985, 1986, and 1988.
They made eight Finals appearances in Buss’ first 11 years owning the team. The ‘Showtime Lakers’, a term coined by Buss himself, marked a shift in the NBA that helped dramatically raise the value of professional basketball teams.
Less than a decade later, Los Angeles had a title-winning rebirth, led by Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Byrant, winning three straight championships in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Byrant then guided Los Angeles to titles in 2009 and 2010, capping off their 16th NBA Championship and Buss’ while 10th owning the team.
When Buss passed in 2013, Jeanie became the team’s governor, with the Buss Family Trust officially owning the team, After 10 ringless years, LeBron James led the Lakers to a Finals win in the 2020 season. Now, as the Buss family prepares to sell their majority share of the team, their 11 titles with the Lakers are the most to be won by a single ownership group in NBA history.
Lakers Going Forward
Even before they announced the sale, the Lakers were at the forefront of a new era, trading Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic in what was hailed as ‘the most shocking trade in NBA history‘. With a 40-year-old James inching closer to retirement, they landed a franchise superstar in Doncic to lead them going forward.
Walter, the incoming majority owner, initially bought a minority share of the team in 2021. According to ESPN’s Ramona Shelbourne, Walter’s investment gave him priority if the Buss family ever decided to sell their share.
“Walter earned the first right of refusal if the Buss family ever decided to sell their 66 percent stake when he purchased Phil Anschutz’s 26 percent stake in 2021,” Shelbourne wrote on X. “In other words, this has been positioned to go this way. There are a lot of ties between the Lakers and Dodgers already.”
The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the biggest franchises in professional sports, and their historic $10 billion sale is a reminder of that. The Buss family turned the team from a successful organization into a global brand, and now in line to get back more than 100 times Dr. Buss’ initial investment.