The Trail Blazers were officially sold to Tom Dundon at the end of March. Mark Walter recently agreed to sell his majority stake in the Lakers just 10 months after he formally purchased the team. On Friday, word broke that Marc Lore is selling his controlling interest in the Timberwolves to minority shareholder Marc Stad.
What’s behind the influx in team sales? As Ben Horney of Front Office Sports writes, there were different driving factors behind all three of those agreements, but it’s clear that franchise valuations are skyrocketing and many new owners seem to view their teams as assets they can flip for profit — sometimes sooner rather than later.
“In the past, what I would see is that people who wanted these teams and won the bids were people who loved the team,” an investment banker who advises on both change-of-control and minority stake sales in pro sports told Front Office Sports. “They had made money, their favorite team came on the market, and bang, they were in. That trend is moving away. There doesn’t seem to be as much affinity for the teams people buy now. That’s probably not a good thing in the long run for the fans.”
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
In a similar story for The Los Angeles Times, Thuc Nhi Nguyen takes an in-depth look at the rise of private equity firms investing in professional sports and particularly the NBA, writing that those firms view teams as a “safe harbor.” “The real attraction of professional sports is it seems somewhat recession-proof,” said James Adams, director of CFA program curriculum and an adjunct professor at New York University. “It has had a very successful run, a high rate of growth, it’s not as subject to the fluctuations of the business cycle as maybe other things are.”
The NBA plans to create an aggregated streaming hub for local media broadcasts ahead of the 2027/28 season and remains in advanced talks with YouTube to run that platform, sources tell Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal. While YouTube appears to be the frontrunner for the tentative streaming service, DAZN is viewed as a viable fallback option, with Amazon and ESPN expressing a level of interest as well. Friend also examines which teams would participate in the local streaming hub, with only one definitively not in the picture: the Raptors, who have an exclusive broadcasting deal with Rogers Communications.
While Hornets guard Dennis Schröder isn’t sure how long he’ll stay in the NBA, he thinks he’ll probably end up being in the league for “two-to-four more years,” per Johnny Askounis of Eurohoops. The German veteran made the comments on the OMR podcast (YouTube link) and admitted a lucrative contract offer in the future could change that estimate. Whenever his time in the league ends, he plans to return to his hometown team, which he controls a majority stake in. “People often ask me if I could come back to play in Europe, especially in the EuroLeague,” he said. “But in that case, I’d be helping another club become bigger. I prefer to return to Braunschweig, where it all started, and play here.”