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Not long ago you could buy an N.B.A. team in the country\u2019s second-largest city for just $2 billion.<\/p>\n
Yet those days are already a thing of the past.<\/p>\n
Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner announced this week that they had bought control of the Los Angeles Lakers in a deal that priced the franchise at $12.5 billion. It was a record figure for a National Basketball Association team, eclipsing the $10 billion paid for the Lakers just last year \u2014 and was the latest in a pattern of skyrocketing sale prices for sports franchises.<\/p>\n
Is it mania or just a reasonable resetting of the market?<\/p>\n
\u201cLike anything else, it\u2019s worth what someone is willing to pay,\u201d Mark Cuban, the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said in an email. <\/p>\n
Mr. Cuban bought the Mavericks from Ross Perot Jr. in 2000 for $285 million. When he sold a majority stake of the N.B.A. team to Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont in 2023, the team was valued at around $3.5 billion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That same year, the N.B.A.\u2019s Suns and the W.N.B.A.\u2019s Mercury, both in Phoenix, were sold to Mat Ishbia, who had made his fortune in mortgage lending, for a valuation of $4 billion. Also in 2023, Michael Jordan, the N.B.A. legend, sold a majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets that priced the team at $3 billion \u2014 $2.7 billion more than he paid in 2010.<\/p>\n
At the time, those numbers seemed outlandish, especially given the size of those teams\u2019 markets.<\/p>\n
It was only the start.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Bill Chisholm led a group that bought the Boston Celtics at a $6.1 billion valuation, just a few months before Mark Walter, a financier, bought a majority stake in the Lakers with the team valued at $10 billion. N.F.L. teams sell much less frequently, but the Seattle Seahawks sold for $9.6 billion last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am absolutely convinced that we have not reached anything close to a ceiling,\u201d said Irwin Kishner, a partner at the law firm Herrick and co-chair of its sports law division. And particularly with the most recognizable teams, he said, \u201cyou could only envision the numbers going further north.\u201d<\/p>\n
By that he means teams like the N.B.A.\u2019s New York Knicks, the N.F.L.\u2019s Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball. Indeed, the Yankees received a $2.6 billion investment this week<\/a> that valued the franchise at close to $10 billion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n People in the sports industry said at least a few things had contributed to the rising prices.<\/p>\n Sports is one of the last big draws to live television, and as a result leagues \u2014 and therefore the teams \u2014 are being paid far more for the rights to air their games.<\/p>\n Mr. Kishner pointed to the N.B.A.\u2019s recent TV rights package: an 11-year agreement with broadcasters worth about $77 billion.<\/p>\n The legalization of sports betting has also opened a new revenue stream for franchises, Mr. Kishner said. And then there\u2019s the feeling that sports, as well as other live and in-person events, may be insulated from the impact of artificial intelligence. The deal for the Lakers was made by an arm of Joshua Kushner\u2019s investment company that focuses on businesses it believes will not be significantly disrupted by the technology.<\/p>\n It probably doesn\u2019t hurt, either, that billionaires have more money than ever<\/a> \u2014 although many of the recent deals have involved investor groups, not individual buyers. On Friday, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest men in the world, was part of a crowded investment group that joined forces to buy about a third of Liverpool Football Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think that going forward, one individual writing a check for a team will be rare,\u201d Mr. Cuban said. \u201cWhich brings its own inherent changes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Not everyone agrees this influx of cash is a good thing. <\/p>\n \u201cSport is the goose that laid the golden egg,\u201d said David Andrews, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies the sociology of sport. He has wondered if fans will become disillusioned if sports leagues and teams become too commercialized or financially driven.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t seem to have happened,\u201d he said. \u201cFor whatever reason, the goose is kind of still alluring, and we\u2019re still enchanted by the game despite its hyper-financialization.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Simmons, a media mogul and prominent Boston sports fan, has lamented that the superwealthy increasingly view sports teams as investments, rather than prized civic entities to protect.<\/p>\n