Mark Walter reversed field dramatically last Thursday, the Iowa-born billionaire agreeing to sell his $10 billion majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers for a quick, astounding $2.5 billion profit.
Word of the surprise deal came but 287 days after the NBA signed off on what at the time was Walter’s record-setting purchase price (all leagues, all sports, all continents) from Jerry Buss’s heirs last Oct. 30.
The 66-year-old Walter, who still has the Dodgers as the crown jewel of his sports empire holdings, immediately established another historic mark: fastest, most lucrative house flip in pro sports history. No word if he gave the office kitchen and baths a presale makeover.
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From the league’s approval to Walter’s handshake deal with Bob Iger and Josh Kushner for $12.5 billion, the realized jump in the Lakers’ valuation averaged some $8.71 million per day, slightly more than $367,000 per hour.
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For that kind of dough, gotta hope the shot clock buzzed every 24 seconds.
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Iger, the decades-long Disney rainmaker, and Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, made known they were pleased as punch with their new sports bauble.
All new team owners say the same, though many shift to buyer’s remorse once the big headlines fade, especially when their team’s losses outnumber the wins and the fans who once filled the arena seats and fueled TV ratings go looking for love in places other than loge seats and BarcaLoungers.
Speculation on the internet ran rampant, just minutes after the intended sale became public, that Walter’s fadeaway Brinks haul came because of unconfirmed financial pressure — the need to feed cash to some of his non-sports business enterprises.
That should sound familiar here. We witnessed that drill’s invention on Jersey Street, Back Bay, when Red Sox owner Harry Frazee said bye-bye to Babe Ruth more than a century ago because he was short on cash, Frazee’s Broadway endeavors falling largely on deaf ears and empty seats.
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Rather than considering selling off parts (bids, please, for Luka Doncic), Walter opted instead to bid his Lakers adieu, while noting in a news release that his brief tenure as the owner was “one of the great honors of my life.”
OK. Whatever. Brief, but great. Walter left behind a nasty task for the Lakers’ season-ticket department. Those agents now must ask fans to dig deep, buy into the same franchise the owner — what’s his name? — just unloaded faster than a Walker Kessler breakout feed up the wing to Doncic.
“We appreciate your loyalty,” they’ll tell would-be buyers.
Now, it’s hard not to reckon the pain and suffering our great-grandparents, grandparents, and everyone in our family sports-loving trees would have been spared if Frazee opted to sell the Sox instead of handing the Yankees that big galoot of a gift that kept on giving.
Frazee mercifully tapped out as owner, Aug. 1, 1923, selling the Sox and Fenway Park to Bob Quinn for a little more than $1 million. Ruth, 28, that day was in the thick of his fourth season with the Yanks, what turned out to be, by the way, his lone season as the American League’s MVP.
The Yankees lost to the Indians, 5-3, Aug. 1 in the Bronx. Ruth (1 for 3) homered off southpaw Sherry Smith. The Sox sale appeared not to make for an emotional day for the Bambino and the Yanks went on to win the 1923 World Series, their first with the Sultan of Swat in the lineup.
At this hour, none of our local franchise owners appears to be ready to run for the doors, Walter-style.
Bill Chisholm completed his purchase of the Celtics for $6.1 billion just a year ago, what was the biggest tab paid for a sports franchise until Walter weeks later opened up his wallet for $10 billion to buy the Lakers. The Iger-Kushner purchase price is better than twice what Chisholm ponied up.
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John Henry, money maestro and former owner of the Florida Marlins who also owns the Globe, led the group that bought the Red Sox and Fenway Park for $660 million in 2002. In June of this year, CNBC valued Henry’s Fenway Sports Group holdings at $15.37 billion, No. 4 on its world’s sports empire list. No. 1 was Kroenke Sports & Entertainment at $26 billion-plus. Walter’s $2.5 billion net take is about four times what Henry et al paid in ’02.
Brookline-born Robert Kraft, kingpin of the Kraft Group (rank No. 11, $12.34 billion, on the CNBC list), purchased the Patriots in 1994 for $172 million. Last month’s sale price of the Seattle Seahawks: $9.612 billion, a touch under what Walter paid for the Lakers way back when. On Thursday, $9.612 billion looked like a Dollar Store bargain.
Now 86, Jeremy Jacobs in 1975 bought the Bruins, Boston Garden, and surrounding building parcels for some $10 million, reportedly only $2 million in cash (roughly what he now pays third-pairing defensemen each season). Texas (city to be named) soon will welcome the latest NHL expansion team, for a fee rumored earlier this summer to be about $2 billion. Post-Walter’s $2.5 billion jackpot, maybe that will be $3 billion.
We live in interesting times, right? Certainly expensive times. There seems no asking price too high, or one beyond robust imagination, around the purchase and sale of franchises that once carved a good business out of the pocket change we spilled to buy a ticket at the box office.
Now it’s oligarchs at the door, venture capitalists at their backs, $2,000 courtside seats and $2.5 billion profit swept off the table, three-card monte style. It was Showtime again for the Lakers this past week, and no one showed more hustle than Mark Walter.