Buss Brothers Join New Padres Ownership Group Following Lakers Sale
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Buss brothers joining new Padres ownership group The Buss brothers' new firm will be part of the Padres ownership group after selling the Lakers.
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Bleacher ReportThe Buss brothers are joining a Padres ownership group led by Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano, they announced Wednesday (h/t ESPN's Dave McMenamin).
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On August 12, 2026, ten months after he finalized the $10 billion deal to acquire the franchise from the hallowed and chaotic Buss family, Mark Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers to a group led by Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a valuation of just over $12 billion. His tenure at the helm is the shortest since the merger, by a factor of at least three: only Ted Stepien, who was possibly the most batshit decision-maker ever to own an NBA team, gets even close, and he lasted three years. This is without a doubt the most shocking sale of a franchise in my 25 years on this planet, and I’d guess that it’s probably the most shocking one anyone reading this can remember.
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Bleacher ReportThe Lakers are in the midst of a pending sale to an ownership group led by Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a record valuation of $12.5 billion, which was reported earlier this month by ESPN's Ramona Shelburne.
CBS SportsRegarding the proposed sale of the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion, Mr. Walter was approached by Josh Kushner and his team about this transaction and the agreement represents a 25% premium to the price paid by Mr. Walter less than a year ago (and an even higher premium to the $5.0 billion valuation Mr. Walter paid in 2021) — hardly a "fire sale." Regarding the Los Angeles Dodgers, to be clear, the team is not being sold and no sale process has been initiated. Dodgers' president Stan Kasten, who is the public face of the franchise, has emphatically stated this position in on-the-record interviews in no uncertain terms.
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This is the Lakers, the runners and gunners and star chasers and champions and the NBA’s crown jewel and the home of a million MVPs and the NBA’s biggest glamour market, and there are people in the world who might really saw off their own legs for a 20 percent chance at taking the reins. And this is also Mark Walter, the billionaire owner of the Dodgers who’s managed to bring a couple World Series to LA by paying just about every superstar imaginable and whose pockets previously seemed to run so deep as to appear endless, and whose organization has proven so successful that the upcoming MLB labor negotiations will in all likelihood take aim at him specifically.
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CBS SportsDodgers controlling owner and chairman Mark Walter recently sold the NBA's Lakers barely a year after purchasing the franchise and amid an investigation by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding potential loan fraud. The obvious next question is whether the Dodgers are next. TWG Global, Walter's holding company, released a statement Wednesday in defense of the owner, insisting that the Dodgers are not for sale.
3 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 SB Nation Walter was supposed to bring some of that magic to the Lakers. Gone were supposed to be the days of Ramona Shelburne exposés and palace intrigue and the dropping-and-reading-of-tealeaves that had so long defined the Lakers after family patriarch Dr. Jerry Buss passed away. They were supposed to have money again, and they were supposed to be smart, and now Walter is gone.
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02 Bleacher Report The investment is being made by Buss Sports Capital, a sports investment firm launched by the Buss brothers in September 2025.
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03 CBS Sports Walter is also reportedly looking to sell his stake in Premier League club Chelsea F.C., but TWG said it is "not considering exiting its stake in the Cadillac Formula 1 team or any other part of TWG Motorsports." His ownership of the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks and the Professional Women's Hockey League were not mentioned specifically.
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Sources (4)
- cbssports
- bleacherreport
- espn
- sbnation