If Mark Walter is selling one of the crown jewels of Los Angeles sports, is he about to sell the other?
No, according to people familiar with the matter not authorized to discuss it publicly. Walter announced the sale of his controlling interest in the Lakers on Wednesday, but he is not looking to sell the Dodgers.
The decision to sell the Lakers is specific to the Lakers and is not a sign Walter is interested in dismantling a sports empire that includes the Dodgers, the Sparks, Chelsea of the English Premier League, the Professional Women’s Hockey League and various tennis and motor sports entities.
Walter has been at the center of a federal loan investigation. His firm, TWG Global, is in talks with investors to raise money to help pay down loans on the books of its insurers that had drawn scrutiny from the Justice Department, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.
Dodgers president and part owner Stan Kasten said he had “no reason to think that” the sale was connected to the investigation
“This is a Laker story, not really a Dodger story,” Kasten said. “It really has nothing to do with the Dodgers. They’re completely separate. And so there are no changes here or contemplated here, and I think that pretty much is the whole story.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts echoed a sentiment shared across the NBA and MLB on Wednesday when asked about the pending sale.
“I was shocked, like I think everyone else was. That’s above all of our pay grades. But I know that he was excited to take on the Lakers, and so I was as surprised as everyone.”
When asked whether he had heard any indication Walter might also sell his stake in the Dodgers, Roberts responded, “I haven’t heard anything. So for me, it’s business as usual.”
In 2012, Walter and his partners bought the Dodgers for $2.15 billion, then a record for a Major League Baseball team.
Under his ownership, the Dodgers have won three of the last six World Series championships and invested record revenues in player contracts so generous that league owners are now pursuing a salary cap, in part to help give teams other than the Dodgers a chance to win the World Series and in part to lift the value of all of its franchises.
Sportico now values the Dodgers at $9 billion.
Walter last year closed his purchase of the Lakers at a valuation of $10 billion and agreed to sell Tuesday at a valuation of $12.5 billion. The buyers: former Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, whose Thrive Eternal venture capital firm invests in sports and owns a share of the San Francisco Giants.
Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
That Walter never put the Lakers up for bid echoes how he bought the Dodgers: An auction had been scheduled among three finalists for the Dodgers, including Walter and his partners. Walter put a take-it-or-leave-it bid on the table so high — hundreds of millions above where the other bidders had been in the process — that former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt called off the auction and congratulated Walter.