RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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For the fourth time in four years, a sports franchise has sold for the highest price tag ever.
Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger have reached an agreement to buy the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers for more than $12 billion, according to ESPN, a surprise deal that will end Mark Walter’s ownership of the team after less than a year. That number is eye-popping considering no team had sold for even a quarter of that amount prior to 2019.
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According to Sportico ’s research, this was the 24th time in the past six decades that a record was set for the most expensive sports franchise sale to date. The first such historic sale was CBS’ majority purchase of the New York Yankees in 1964 for $13.2 million, or roughly $140 million in 2026 dollars. For the next three decades, franchise values increased slowly, but didn’t yet skyrocket. When Peter Angelos formed a group to buy the Baltimore Orioles in 1993, the deal valued the team at a record-setting $173 million, or approximately $405 million in 2026 dollars.
Later in the 1990s, valuations started to soar. Following the Orioles’ sale, the record was broken five more times during the following six years, with rapidly increasing prices. Adjusting for inflation, the value of the most expensive sports team sale roughly quadrupled between 1993 and 1999, when a Dan Snyder-led group bought the then-Washington Redskins for $800 million, the highest price tag ever for a sports franchise at the time. Snyder sold the Commanders in 2023 to Josh Harris for $6.05 billion , again the most expensive team sale at that point in history.
Snyder’s claim to having sold and bought a team for a record-setting amount was matched very quickly, with Walter flipping the Lakers less than a year after purchasing the franchise for $10 billion. The record-holders in this category don’t tend to last long—there could be a new one soon.
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