Former Disney CEO Bob Iger Buying LA Lakers for Record $12 Billion
On the anniversary of the opening date of the NBA Experience, everyone’s favorite extinct Walt Disney World offering, Bob Iger and Josh Kushner are buying the Los Angeles Lakers for a record-breaking $12.5 billion. In news that I’m sure won’t be met with backlash or snide remarks by any Disney fans, this offers a window into the former CEO’s plans for life after Disney.
The businessmen were involved in the NBA expansion process in Las Vegas, but pivoted to make an aggressive offer to buy the Lakers from Mark Walter. This is the second such sale in less than a year, as Walter himself previously purchased the team in October 2025 for a valuation of approximately $10 billion. I’m not a numbers guy, but two and a half billion seems like decent ROI for 10 months!
“As lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the 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 Jeanie Buss,” Kushner and Iger said in a statement.
The pair added that “our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles.” The sale of the Lakers still will need approval from the NBA’s board of governors, and that process can take several weeks. The next board meeting is set for next month in New York.
“Owning the Los Angeles Lakers has been one of the great honors of my life — an extraordinary investment, but what I will carry with me is the community, the fans, and a city that treats this team as family. I am grateful to Jeanie Buss, the Buss family, the players, and the staff for welcoming me into this chapter. The Lakers belong to Los Angeles, and I have every confidence the best is still ahead,” Walter said in a statement.
Walter has interests in multiple professional sports organizations, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, LA Sparks, and auto racing teams. Walter is selling only the Lakers in this transaction. Perhaps the $12.5 billion will help him fund more offseason roster moves for the Dodgers. Because they really aren’t spending enough.
The Lakers are one of the most iconic franchises in sports with 17 championships, most recently in 2020. Ironically enough, that was the NBA Bubble Season, which was played at Walt Disney World while Lebron James stayed at Coronado Springs. (He’s just like us!) Last season, the team finished fourth in the Western Conference before being eliminated by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the semifinals.
NBA superstar LeBron James, the all-time leading scorer in the league, played eight seasons with the Lakers. He announced in July he was leaving Los Angeles to join the Philadelphia 76ers on a two-year, $8 million contract. Unconfirmed reports indicate James was “more of a Chapek guy” so this could explain why. The Lakers will now be led by six-time NBA All-Star Luka Dončić, who led the league with 33.5 points per game last season.
Josh Kushner, 41, founded and runs venture capital firm Thrive Capital and is the co-founder and vice chairman of Oscar Health. He’s also a minority owner of the Miami Heat. FIFA wanted to sell a minority stake in the World Cup to Thrive Capital, but the plan was halted amid worldwide backlash from soccer leaders. He’s also the younger brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump.
You know who Bob Iger is. But what you may not know is that he and wife Willow Bay are the majority owners of Angel City FC, a National Women’s Soccer League franchise based in Los Angeles. They purchased their controlling stake in 2024 at a $250 million valuation.
Iger’s team (the soccer one, not the basketball one) will host a Disney Princess Theme Night on August 16, 2026, hours after Bob Iger is named a Disney Legend at D23. Another Disney Legend, Tony Award-winning actress and singer Anika Noni Rose, will perform during halftime. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with this information, but it seems like a fun fact (is it?!).
ESPN first reported the sale for the Los Angeles Lakers to Bob Iger.
Our Commentary
I’m going to try to keep this short because I know that 98% of you (conservative estimate) don’t care and probably didn’t even read this far. But I truly find this interesting for a couple of reasons.
The first is because of the connection to the NBA Experience. And it really is the anniversary of the opening of that defunct venue, which debuted on August 12, 2019. The 44,000 complex was a joint effort between Disney and the NBA, and featured 13 interactive and hands-on activities.
The separately-ticketed NBA Experience technically spent more time (temporarily) closed than open while the venue was operational. The NBA Experience was open from August 12, 2019 until March 2020 when it closed during COVID and never reopened. It was preceded by DisneyQuest and succeeded this summer by Level99, which has already been a bigger success than NBA Experience ever was.
The totality of our NBA Experience coverage was construction updates and a lame running joke where I pretended to forget what was replacing DisneyQuest and feigned surprise that the project hadn’t been cancelled. My commentary repeatedly questioned whether the market for such a huge venue dedicated to a single sport existed among Walt Disney World visitors.
It did not. Even while open, NBA Experience struggled to draw guests and offered aggressive Cast Member deals. Obviously, the closure of Walt Disney World and subsequent slowdown during the phased reopening didn’t help.
However, business has been booming at Disney Springs for over a year at this point. The closure of NBA Experience was inevitable. We didn’t cover the NBA Experience while it was operational because there was zero reader interest. We didn’t receive a single comment asking when we’d review it.
It would be easy to dunk on the NBA Experience closing after less than a year of operations, labeling it an air ball (as Universal did) or Disney misjudging its demographics. On the surface, those assessments are valid. Directly, NBA Experience almost certainly lost tens of millions of dollars.
However, its legacy for the Walt Disney Company and even Walt Disney World as a whole is a bit more complicated, and an open question no one can assess from the outside looking in.
Notably, the opening of NBA Experience was attended by high profile current and retired players, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger. It’s worth noting that, Iger did not even attend the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Walt Disney World that same month. The last Florida opening Iger had attended prior to NBA Experience was Pandora – World of Avatar (2017), which was likely due to James Cameron’s involvement.
The gala grand opening for NBA Experience–outsized given its significance to Walt Disney World and its revenue generating power–reflected the strategic importance of the NBA to the Walt Disney Company. Iger was present because of that, and his relationship with Adam Silver.
We speculated at the time that the NBA Experience itself was likely a vanity project that Disney undertook only because the NBA was so important to the company. More specifically, it could’ve been due to the high-level relationship between Iger and Silver.
Although it was unknowable at the time, the strength of Disney’s relationship with the NBA was vindicated when the league chose Walt Disney World as the home of its “NBA Bubble” in Summer 2020. While many Disney fans grumbled about it at the time, the NBA Bubble was huge for Walt Disney World.
The NBA Bubble filled hotels that otherwise were not being booked, helped keep thousands of Cast Members employed, and was an early, high profile success story that the company touted as proof of its ability to safely operate Walt Disney World. Suffice to say, the NBA Experience helped paved the way for the NBA Bubble.
Now, the case could be made that the NBA Experience also helped pave the way for Iger to become an owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. It is honestly remarkable how one short-lived, failed venue has this significant of a legacy despite being completely forgotten in the minds of fans.
The other reason this is interesting from our perspective is that it further cements the fact that Bob Iger is, in fact, gone from Disney. When he first retired, there was a lot of chatter among fans that he wasn’t actually leaving and would look for another opportunity to return and play savior again. From this purchase of the Lakers and other recent moves, it’s clear that he’s moving on with life after Disney.
Since the beginning, we’ve said this time is different. That was evident when it came to the whole “Thank You, Bob!” send-off and Iger being announced as a Disney Legend only days after departing. To many fans, that felt like an extension of this self-serving and ego-driven farewell.
My perspective is that the send-off was not driven by Bob Iger, but rather, was likely an initiative by the new regime. My best guess is that honoring Bob Iger as a Disney Legend is a similar story. And my suspicion is that it’s calculated; a matter of self-interest.
Josh D’Amaro and his camp obviously saw what unfolded the last time Iger stepped down as CEO. While there is good reason to believe that “this time it’s different,” why not do everything in their power to insure it is? Chapek made so many unforced errors that some fans don’t recognize what savvy succession strategy looks like. That includes a fairytale farewell that makes it a little more difficult for Iger to keep one foot in the door and return.
Ultimately, as strategic as all of that might’ve been on the part of Josh D’Amaro’s camp, it was probably unnecessary. Everything he has said and done recently–even before officially retiring–suggests Bob Iger was done. That his fairytale comeback story was clearly coming to an end.
Even from the outside looking in, this was plainly evident. Iger made public comments indicating that turning things around at Disney has been more difficult than he anticipated. Based on his own statements, the job was wearing him down and he might’ve even had regrets about returning.
As someone who watches virtually every Bob Iger appearance and interview, I also noticed visible cracks in the veneer over the last few years. As it turns out, cleaning up Chapek’s catastrophe’s (which were partially Iger’s since he handed over the keys to that man) was easier said than done! By the end, Iger had lost a step–something I would not have said in early 2020 when he left abruptly for the first time. He’s like the Lebron of then and now; still one of the best to ever do it, but not the same as during his prime.
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OUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on Bob Iger buying the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Was listening to Bill Simmons react to the sale of the Lakers on his podcast. He mentioned that Bob Iger hoped to become a leading figure in the Chargers’ relocation from San Diego, but “rubbed NFL owners the wrong way.” His prior NFL pursuits, suggest he must have been thinking of serving as the figurehead of a major sports organization when working with Adam Silver on the NBA bubble and NBA experience.
The defunct NBA Experience has ZERO to do with this, so why bering it up at all? Maybe ironic, but that’s it.
And why would Disney fans care? Iger may still be on the Disney board, but again this has nothing to do with Disney (except for existing ESPN NBC contracts, but that is also true of NBC, Amazon Prime, etc.)
I live in southern California but really do not follow sports at all, but obviously the Laker fans may care being that Guggenheim Investments also own the Dodgers (but just reported their CEO and the company is being investigated by the SEC for not reporting certain investments – unrelated to the Lakers).
So basically the story is “The former CEO of Disney and another partner are buying the Lakers” – That’s it! Nothing more. Big deal to the sports fans, but not to Disney fans.
“And why would Disney fans care?”
Most probably don’t, which is why they wouldn’t click on an article with this headline in the first place.
But every time I visit Disneyland during the NBA season and see all of the Lakers gear being worn (or now with the Dodgers), I’m reminded that there’s crossover between the fandoms.
I found the news interesting. If others don’t, that’s perfectly fine.
My two cents: I am not a basketball fan at all (I can probably only name 20 basketball players ever, alive or dead) but I read through the whole article. I thought it was interesting to hear about Iger’s post-Disney life, and I thought Tom’s approach to the article was well-thought out, relevant to Disney, and worth the read.
I agree with Melody. I’m not a NBA fan at all, but I don’t think Tom’s ever written an article that I didn’t find interesting. I read through the entirety of this one and enjoyed it, so thank you Tom! (I didn’t even know NBA Experience ever existed!)
Next time, maybe just don’t click on it if you aren’t interested. Many of us enjoy reading Tom’s well thought-out commentary on any topic 🙂
Besides the Iger connection, the most interesting thing about this sale is that Walter is selling so soon. Apparently he’s under investigation from the SEC for loan fraud. I have to think this has something to do with the quick sale. Most (incredibly rich) people don’t buy a sports franchise just to sell it a year later.
Yeah, that part was in the original ESPN reporting, but I didn’t think it was germane to this audience. It also just came to light that he had a stroke back in 2024, so there are questions about his fitness to run the businesses.
So, taking the analogy and running with it – if Iger is LeBron, is Eisner Michael Jordan? Making Walt Bill Russell, lol
Walt is definitely Michael Jordan. I don’t care about timelines–there’s only one clear #1 in both sides of this comparison.
I’d probably have Eisner as Shaq, only because they’re both a bit Goofy. 😉
The only thing that’s weird to me is that he’s going into business with a Kushner…
The NBA experience failed not because it was the NBA, but because it’s attractions were totally boring. one was simply shooting basketball in a hoop, which anyone could do at home. The other issue was the price point to enter the attraction was not worth the attraction itself.
I knew Iger got paid a lot, but ~$6 billion!?! No wonder the company can’t afford to fix the Yeti…
Iger is not “even” a billionaire. He’s just one of two public faces of an investment group, which presumably has other partners.
Nail on the head: This means that Iger’s involvement with Disney as anything other than a shareholder or potential corporate partner is OVER. He’s done and he’s not coming back. I don’t view that as either good or bad, rather I would use a different word. Healthy.
Completely agree. It probably won’t be the last time Bob Iger makes Disney-related news, but this very clearly isn’t like the Chapek era when he’s going to be constantly weighing in or having his camp backchannel critique about current leadership.
I still can’t wait for the book about all that.
I very fondly remember watching the show “NBA Inside Stuff” almost every Saturday as a teenager in the 1990s as a massive Bulls/NBA fan (this was the pinnacle of the golden age of the NBA that started in the early 1980s). This was pre-Internet era when there was almost no other NBA-focused content available to consume beyond the games themselves (or VHS highlight tapes).
Until today I’m not sure I knew or remembered that Bob’s wife is Willow Bay — but during most of the 90s, she co-hosted the NBA Inside Stuff with Ahmad Rashad. So she, way more than Bob Iger himself, is always intrinsically tied into the NBA universe in my mind.
I did know Bob Iger’s wife was Willow Bay, but did NOT realize she was the co-host of NBA Inside Stuff until just now. Holy cow–what a blast from the past! Thanks for that!