Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Mark Walter Will Sell Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 Billion

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Lakers have been sold again, this time to Josh Kushner and Bob Eiger. What does that mean for the franchise going forward? And how did we get here anyway? That's next. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for stopping by Lockdown Lakers, Brian Kvinetsky.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Andy Kemenzki, very busy and unexpected day in and around Elsugndo, Angeles and the NBA generally, not to swoop in and kind of steal the thunder from NBA Cup schedule release day, but the Lakers have once again been sold. Today's episode's brought to by Fanduel, all the action at fanduel.com. Join all the action at fandwell.com to play Daily Dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a homer this season in MLB. All right. So we woke up to the news, Andy, that the Lakers, who, not only what was,

Starting point is 00:01:08 Was it 18 months ago? 14 months ago. 14 months ago were sold to the Guggenheim group and Mark Walter are being sold again, this time to venture capitalist Josh Kushner and Bob Eiger, former head of Disney. So a couple familiar names, certainly Bob Eiger is, 12.5 billion dollars. 12.5 billion American dollars is the sale valuation there. it's just Walter selling his portion of the, of the, you know, his share of the, of the, you know, his share of of the, of the Lakers franchise, uh, again, evaluation of 12.5 billion dollars,

Starting point is 00:01:50 which amounts to a two and a half billion dollar profit, um, in terms of the valuation in about a year of ownership. So tidy, I think would be the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, characterization of that profit. I mean, there's going to be a lot of different ways that this is going to be talked about. Certainly, it is one hell of a profit to make in short ownership. There's a lot of different ramifications from that. Ramona Shelburne, who broke the story, our friend over at ESPN, said that this deal really came together over the last few days, which is frankly stunning for a, I mean, unheard of for a deal of this.

Starting point is 00:02:35 magnitude. Like, I'm very curious to learn more details about, you know, how this was initiated, whether, you know, Josh, uh, Josh Kushner and Bob Eiger intuiting that this could be a possibility from Mark Walter, Mark Walter perhaps. Well, I mean, Romona was, Romona went on 710 and ESPN radio in L.A. and kind of walked through this a little bit. And basically, you know, Kushner and Bob Eiger have been deeply involved in trying to bid for one of the. expansion franchises in Las Vegas. And as Ramona described it, they saw the price for that when you take into consideration franchise fees and expand all the, you know, just going up and up and up and up and up and up.

Starting point is 00:03:18 And they decided to take a run at Lakers instead. But I mean more just the idea that Walter would even be open to this. And, you know, like that obviously you can make a. really aggressive offer, but there has to be a reason that you think it would be possible. And whether that has to do with Mark Walter's businesses being under federal investigation or health issues, he reportedly suffered a stroke, I believe within the last year or so. It was a longer than that, but yes. Whether a combination of those things, other impetuses, whether they just figured out if we put

Starting point is 00:04:01 out a godfather offer. Right. Right. The other alternative there is it's $2.5 billion. Sure. But, you know, Mark Walter, while $2.5 billion is a lot of money. Mark Walter has many ways to make $2.5 billion. So again, the TikTok of the why and the impetus and all of that as we learn more details is going to be really interesting to learn. You can present, you can present, Andy, all of this, basically every scenario. he's doing it because, I mean, I need somebody to explain to me why the cash would like be needed for if he's under investigation.

Starting point is 00:04:40 But that was where most people's minds went. Statement from Bob Eiger and Josh Kushner, quote, as lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity. Becomes stewards of Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world. We have immense respect for the leadership and vision of Jerry and Jeannie Buss. Our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team. It's fans and the city of Los Angeles. Should be noted, too, that both Kushner and Eiger have experience with sports ownership. Cushner is actually a current minority heat, a current Miami Heat minority.

Starting point is 00:05:24 Minor owner of, right. Right. They'll obviously have to sell those shares. Bob Eiger has been involved with professional. professional soccer, but not- Bob Eager and his wife are the majority owners of Angel City, FC. Right. But neither of them have,

Starting point is 00:05:38 I think, what is considered as extensive a track record as Mark Walters group, much less with an organization like the Lakers or the Dodgers. Dodgification of the Lakers era, we hardly knew you. Yeah, it's, you know, so

Starting point is 00:05:53 there's really two parts of this story. There's the why is Mark Walter selling? And again, I could believe just about every scenario from it's directly related to the federal investigation. There are some more politically based conspiracy theories out there that we don't necessarily need to get into. But I could believe some of those. I'll finish my thought you can get into if you want.

Starting point is 00:06:21 But like I could believe that it's related to his health. I could believe that it's related to, you know, just maybe. You know, you get into the NBA ownership thing. You don't like it. You're finding you don't like it as much as you like owning the baseball team. I could get, I could certainly believe ultimately you're a businessman and two people come to you and say, we can turn this thing that you bought for $10 million into $12.5 billion. Are you interested?

Starting point is 00:06:51 And just saying, actually, I am. I could believe all of those things and any combination of those things. And am simply going to reserve judgment on the why. Because, you know, for, and we'll get into this, I'm sure, for the next segment. But for our purposes, it's the much more relevant thing is, what happens now? Yeah, really quick just because I don't want to dwell on it either. But so it doesn't feel like we're avoiding a very obvious elephant in the room. Josh Kushner has always maintained a pretty big separation.

Starting point is 00:07:29 from his brother Jared when it comes to politics, stated views that lean opposite. He has not been involved with the Trump administration or anything like that. I'm not saying that is a good or a bad thing. No, but he's in business. The conspiracy theory is basically that they, you know, in exchange for perhaps lightning of the federal investigation, you sell the team to a Kushner. He and his brother are in business together, but they are not polluted. They are.

Starting point is 00:07:57 They are, well, but also, too. I've been in business together, but they're part of family business and stuff like that. They run a venture cap. They run a VC firm together. I understand. I get all that. I'm not looking to get into any of the conspiracy theories of it. I wanted to just note the political separation because of the political world and climate that we're in now.

Starting point is 00:08:19 I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing. I'm just because I have seen a lot of people react as this as an extension. of essentially the Trump administration. And I don't think that's accurate. Again, good, bad, whatever, just for that clarification. And I think, again, because of the political climate that we're in, I'm not getting into the whole conspiracy theory of federal investigation connected, any of that.

Starting point is 00:08:48 And so it's, by the way, the stroke for Mark Walter was in 2024, so a couple years ago. So I mean, look, I can see there's a, this, the, the why and all of this is going to take a minute to unpack. And we'll see, you know, if it turns out Mark Walter needed a lot of free cash for, you know, to fight off an investigation or to pay a fine or to whatever it might be, some sort of settlement or whatever, then, you know, the money he's getting here could come in handy. If it's, if it's something different, you know, Ramona categorized it. in her spot with, you know, Sedano on 710 on Wednesday morning, really as a, somebody put, dropped two and a half billion dollars on his doorstep. And he described it as a straight business transaction as opposed to say when Mark Walter became principal owner because he had been a minority owner of the Lakers before

Starting point is 00:09:49 then, write a first refusal contractually and had an established relationship and comfort level with Jeannie Bus, which we talked about at the time, undoubtedly played a role in Jeannie's willingness to do this. I took, though, that interpretation of a business transaction as basically saying it wasn't related to the investigation as just somebody offered him to a billion dollars to sell. That was my interpretation of it. The bigger question becomes what happens now because the Lakers had been doing stuff, you know, the sort of melding of the Lakers and Dodgers they're in the midst of hiring people.

Starting point is 00:10:31 So there's a lot to think about and unpack there, which we'll do next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Fandul. Baseball fans, if you think you know who's hitting over today. FanDuel is giving you a free chance to call your shot with daily dingers. Easy to play. Just make your free pick for who you think will hit a home run in their game. If you're right, you'll receive a profit boost to use on your next bet for a chance

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Starting point is 00:11:21 team, his name rhymes with O'Ha Shokani. Pretty good for a home run prediction if that's where you want to put your daily dinger bet. It gives you another reason to pay attention before the first pitch. If you're ready to play your game today, join all the action of fandul.com. Fanlulul.com to play day daily dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a homer play ball, swing for the fences on Fandle, an official partner of MLB. Luca earlier, by the way, tweeting out his support and his excitement to meet the new owners. This is the third ownership group that he will have played for in under three seasons. He's not been here three seasons.

Starting point is 00:12:11 So about every, I don't know, two-thirds of a season or so, he gets a new owner. But so Luca, Lucas is probably surprised as anybody. I mean, look, I mean, these, from, what happens now is, is the one thing that I think is, we don't, you mentioned the first segment. We, you know, Mark Walter and his group have a track record in a formula for running a team. We didn't know necessarily whether it would translate directly to basketball, how much, how much success. But there is a track record of process success that they have with the Dodgers, obviously very, very strong.

Starting point is 00:12:51 from a financial pockets standpoint, Lakers still going to have plenty of money. I mean, I don't think, you know, Kushner and Bob Iger have the net worth of Mark Walter and Guggenheim. But it's not, there is no reason to believe there will be a significant

Starting point is 00:13:15 amount of penny pinching. Any things, any programs around beefing up the staff and all the should all continue or the very least don't have to stop because of money. Money shouldn't be the issue. They just paid $12.5 billion from the team. It injects uncertainty, though, to how the team might be operated. And then what happens next because so much of what the Lakers were doing was tied to Mark Walters' joint ownership of both the Lakers and the Dodgers.

Starting point is 00:13:54 So I think the era of taking people from the business and financial operation of the Dodgers and dropping them into the Lakers front office is probably over. Yeah. There are a lot of people right now who may be wondering about their job security. Obviously, most Laker fans are going to be focusing

Starting point is 00:14:16 first on Rob Polinka and what this means for his security. moving forward or I guess the future of second assistant general manager TBD, which was still a hiring process. But most of the moves that had been made under the stewardship of Mark Walter had been on the business side. Like the actual front office, which is the side of the building that Laker fans care about the most, we've talked about this a lot. There has seemingly been very little traction or certainly not as much traction as I know we had both hoped for. They hired the rocket scientist and are taking interviews on everybody else. Right. Or, you know, the scouting department, which to the best of our knowledge has not been

Starting point is 00:15:05 buffed out the way there had been expectations. You know, looking back on it now, you wonder if there had been any hesitation because if Mark Walter had been thinking about potentially getting out of this thing faster than he had anticipated. These things just moved slowly. They were just more comfortable with putting people into the business side because that's where they know a lot of, they have a lot of comfort level with some of their established names doing kind of dual roles. But obviously, what does this mean for Rob Polinka's job security? How often have Bob Iger and Josh Kushner subscribe to the ethos of office? optionality. It's probably very important to Rob moving forward.

Starting point is 00:15:51 Have either ever been on a trolley car? I'm not sure. No, these are things that Rob is probably desperately Googling as we speak. What does this mean for Jeannie Bus's role as governor of the team moving forward? Because that had been something she had worked out with Mark Walter. I don't know the contract language or anything like that or just the general approach to running the basketball piece of of this. And again, the part that the fans care about most, you know, the, this is a money, money printing organization. So the idea of what happens on that side of the building, which again, has gotten the most traction is not the part fans care about. They care about how,

Starting point is 00:16:38 what brains will and what people will be put in charge of making basketball decisions. We will see. But this, it's just kind of crazy. how fast this has turned and how this organization that had been run by the same family for decades, going back to 1979, has now changed hands twice into, I mean, it still has to go through, you know, approval process, stuff like that. I would be surprised if it didn't. I mean, frankly, if Tom Dundon got approved, Iger and Cushner would have to be. to do a lot of pretty. I mean, it does get to a reality.

Starting point is 00:17:22 Like, you know, and I know there's a, you know, there's a lot of reaction. You know, we live in hyper online times. You mentioned the hyper political times. Like, you know, there's people have visceral reactions to venture capitalists. And, you know, the, the effect of VC money on sports and all these things is a, as a whole other topic. But like, we do live in an era now where. you know, you're sort of your family ownership is just not a thing anymore.

Starting point is 00:17:52 Like you need a certain amount of capital. It shrinks the amount of available people to do this sort of thing. You know, like, yeah, you went over the top of Mark Walters $10 billion purchase of the team to, you know, buy $2.5 billion in a year. So it's like there just aren't a lot of groups that can do that. You know, it's why, you know, these guys who had been in that. conversation for the Vegas team are really seeding now that space to like, I believe it's like the Walton's, you know, the Walmart folks. Like there, there's just a certain amount of wealth that

Starting point is 00:18:28 you need to be able to have to do this. And people, a lot of people don't like venture capitalists and all that stuff of people may not have liked where Mark Walter got his money. Like I, there, there are aspects of this that I think, that I think are, that I understand where people come in. but the one thing that Lakers fans, Lakers fans have been really slow to have to adapt to this sort of new world order of sports franchise owning. Because like, say what you want to. I mean, Tom Dundon, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:02 doesn't look like he's going to win any popularity contests in Portland anytime soon. But at the very least, you know, like the guy did win, has won Stanley Cups and with the hockey team he owns in Carolina. So good owner batter and we're not sure yet. The Lakers were a family operation for a long time, for better or for worse. And now they're not. And this sort of thing happens. And it remains just to be seen.

Starting point is 00:19:32 What are the Lakers going to do to, like, how much unwinding does there need to be? The sale hasn't gone through yet. So are certain people who are recent, hires for the Lakers in their front office, but came from the Dodgers organization. Do those people go back? Like it injects a great deal of organizational uncertainty to a process that was already in flux. It's like it's not like they, like you said, it's like they weren't, it's not like they'd finished to the remodel.

Starting point is 00:20:08 It's like halfway done. It's funny though. Like in that sense, like obviously instability, and this is a form of instability. Even if it turns out, even if it turns out to be good in the long run, for the moment, this is a form of instability. With that in mind, though, I guess maybe you could look at it glass half full that they seemingly were behind on some of these hires in the sense that now assuming those positions get buffed out the way I know Laker fans had expected under the Walter era by somebody,

Starting point is 00:20:46 at least now maybe they will be hired by whoever Iger and Kushner would want, just so you're not constantly cycling through and replacing people. Like the issue, the immediate issue to me, though, is, you know, it's because it starts, it restarts the clock because now a lot of things pause. Like, you know, whoever, if Cushner doesn't want, if Cushner, who I guess is going to be the majority owner with Bob Eiger is probably the guy you'll see more often because Josh Cushner is a reportedly actually a pretty private person.

Starting point is 00:21:26 So you're probably going to see Bob Eager more. Despite being married to a supermodel. A supermodel. Carly Clause, I believe. Yes. From Sports Illustrated fame. I believe either that or Victoria's Secret. I'm not sure.

Starting point is 00:21:45 She did progress beyond regular model to supermodels. I'm just saying, I mean, that tends to be the spot where the superest of models land. It is one of them. That's for sure. So good for good for him. But like it stops things. And so like I don't know what Kushner and Iger. going to do. I don't know if they're going to, you know, I don't know. One of the things that I think is

Starting point is 00:22:11 going to be like Jeannie Bus, like the Bus family kept their shares in this, but I don't know if that sort of handshake five-year agreement that Johnny's going to stay. I don't know if that goes through. I don't know if, you know, Kushner would honor that in the same way that. And so like, it wasn't just quickly. I don't, this is why I think it's really interesting. It wasn't a handshake before. This was like, you know what I understand me. Like, but that, the, that, the, that part of the yeah yes he's correct it is it is in there but like mark cuban got burned by the handshake does that still apply here like if if cuchner and um and iger say you know what rob polinca is not our guy although rob polinca as we've determined it's very hard to kill you you you just don't

Starting point is 00:22:57 you just don't eliminate rob polinka rob polinka eliminates you owners he did coaches but my only my biggest point is and I'll let you go is whatever the answer is to those questions about what Iger and Kushner want to do to run the team how they want to organize it what structures they want who are the experts they want to bring in none of that's going to happen until the sale actually goes through and that's going to take months yeah i mean rob polinka you could look at you could look at his last extension from Jeannie bus as job security a job extension or a golden parric I mean, it depends, it really depending on how things move going forward. But I would be stunned if Jeannie had did not give him that extension at the time knowing there could have been a possibility of selling to Mark Walter and his group.

Starting point is 00:23:51 You know, Rob, Rob has shown a lot of on killability, but he also respectfully to Jeannie had been unkillable under a boss that I suspect. All I'm saying is the guy seems to outlast everybody. So we'll see what happens there. But regardless, again, it just, nothing's going to happen for months. And so whatever, you know, I don't know if the Lakers will stop making hires. There'll probably be some coordination in this and that, whatever. But larger grand plans you would think are going to be put on hold. And, you know, these big organizational changes.

Starting point is 00:24:29 And so that to me is the part that is most impactful. because, you know, that's the part that most directly impacts the product the Lakers put on the floor at a time when, as we've discussed, like they got a lot of work to do to make this team a championship contender on the Lucca Donchage timeline. So as more things have, we will certainly, I have a feeling, bring this up again for the big show for Thursday. So a lot of information I think is going to come out over the course of Wednesday afternoon into Thursday, into Friday. and we'll obviously bring that to you. So Locked on YouTube is where you can hang out with over 39,000 subscribers. Make sure you're subscribing to the audio product and everywhere you can get it because otherwise you might miss shows like this.

Starting point is 00:25:15 And we'll see everyone next time.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Mark Walter Will Sell Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 Billion

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