PWHL Mark Walter
Multiple federal agencies are looking into the embattled billionaire’s dense web of overlapping insurance interests. Earlier this year, he used the women’s hockey league’s intellectual property as backing for a loan.
Billionaire Mark Walter’s holding company pledged nine trademarks owned by the Professional Women’s Hockey League earlier this year as collateral for a loan from a BlackRock subsidiary, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The signed arrangement, which was first identified by users on Reddit, was between PWHL Holdings LLC and BlackRock-owned HPS Investment Partners LLC, and included the “PWHL” wordmark, the “W” design with two hockey sticks and the title of the PWHL podcast Jocks in Jills. It is dated June 30, 2026, meaning it came after multiple federal agencies began looking into Walter’s dense web of overlapping insurance interests, and before he agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a record $12.5 billion deal. The exact terms of the PWHL’s loan, including the value of the league’s intellectual property, were not disclosed in the documents.
Walter has owned the PWHL, through his holding company TWG Global, since its inception in 2023. Meanwhile, the $15 trillion asset manager BlackRock closed on its $12 billion acquisition of HPS Investment Partners in July of last year.
The trademark security agreement, a copy of which was obtained via the USPTO database, was signed by on behalf of PWHL Holdings by Richard Moore, who is an executive vice president at TWG Global.
Last month The Wall Street Journal called Moore a “longtime lieutenant” of Walter, one who “played a key role in striking the complex financial deals in the Dodgers owner’s sprawling business empire that have drawn scrutiny from federal investigators.” Moore served as a conduit at TWG between the Walter-controlled insurers and other related business being funded via undisclosed connections, the newspaper said.
The PWHL and BlackRock declined to comment. Representatives for TWG Global and Proskauer, which represented the PWHL in the transaction, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Walter started the women’s hockey league alongside his wife, Kimbra, and sports icon Billie Jean King three years ago after buying the assets of the Premier Hockey Federation, its predecessor, and striking a deal with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. Earlier this year, the upstart raised more than $100 million from Kilmer Sports Ventures, Larry Tanenbaum’s private investment firm, and Ilitch Companies, the parent organization of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and MLB’s Tigers. But it’s still just a small piece of Walter’s sprawling sports empire.
The co-founder and CEO of financial services firm Guggenheim Partners also controls MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers, the WNBA’s Sparks, the Cadillac Formula 1 Team and, up until recently, stakes in the NBA’s Lakers and the Premier League’s Chelsea FC. About a year after buying a majority interest in the Lakers for $10 billion, Walter agreed to unload the franchise to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner. That deal has not yet closed. He also recently agreed to sell his stake in Chelsea, which he shared with Todd Boehly, for $1.3 billion in a move that valued the English club at $6.7 billion.
That’s largely been driven by the federal probe and parallel SEC investigation Walter is facing, which centers around loans made by the insurance companies he controls. His phone and laptop were seized by FBI agents last year, according to Crain’s, and a Bloomberg report from August said that his holding company was talking to investors about an influx of capital to pay down those very same loans.
Walter was named in a proposed class-action lawsuit last week, alleging that several insurance businesses under his control concealed an ongoing federal investigation from customers while also directing their money into other entities controlled by Walter, according to a report from The Athletic. Also named as defendants in the suit were other Walter-owned entities, including Delaware Life Insurance Company and Clear Spring Life and Annuity, plus TWG Global and Guggenheim Partners.
The governmental scrutiny and the sudden sales of the Lakers and Chelsea have yielded speculation as to whether any of Walter’s other sports assets were on the block. Stan Kasten, the Dodgers’ president and a member of the PWHL’s advisory board, has publicly stated that neither the baseball club nor the hockey league are for sale.
TWG Sports assets appear in SEC filings from two different HPS credit funds that were filed on the same day as the PWHL deal, though the specific assets are not identified. They also show up in a quarterly disclosure for a BlackRock private credit fund dating back to April, as well as the Cliffwater Enhanced Lending Fund, which falls under a separate asset manager. It’s unclear if any of these line items include PWHL trademarks.