Bob Iger, Josh Kushner Buys LA Lakers for $12.5B & The FAA is Run by Gamers

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**Neal Freyman** (0:28)
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.

**Kyle Haggis** (0:31)
And I'm Kyle Haggis.

**Neal Freyman** (0:32)
Today, the Lakers sale that shocked the world.

**Kyle Haggis** (0:35)
And why Roku is bringing AI Slop to your living room. It's Thursday, August 13th. Let's ride.

**Neal Freyman** (0:51)
Good Morning, Kyle Haggis is stepping up to the plate today since Toby is out getting married.

**Kyle Haggis** (0:57)
Wow, what a loser that guy is.

**Neal Freyman** (0:59)
Kyle, you get a host on a special day, Left Handers Day. And our warmest wishes go out to the 10% of humans and most kangaroos listening to this. From scissors to those desks in lecture halls, this world was not designed for you, but you persevered to produce the likes of Oprah, Sir Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, Dontrell Willis, maybe Ben Simmons and Bart Simpson. Don't forget to elbow someone at the dinner table tonight to remind them whose day it is.

**Kyle Haggis** (1:26)
I didn't know kangaroos had motion like that. Most of them are left handed. I love lefties. They're just, you meet someone who's left handed, automatically cooler. And in a few sports, there's definitely an advantage to being left handed. So I wish I was left handed personally.

**Neal Freyman** (1:40)
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**Kyle Haggis** (1:46)
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Bob Iger has quickly gone from show business to show time. And that is the showtime Lakers. After it was announced that he, alongside Josh Kushner, will purchase the controlling interest in the LA Lakers, valuing the historic franchise at $12.5 billion.
The sale, which still needs to be approved by the NBA's Board of Governors, would be the most expensive purchase valuation of any professional sports franchise, besting the 2025 deal for, you guessed it, the Los Angeles Lakers, which valued this franchise at $10 billion just 14 months ago. And this is where the story gets even more interesting. The owner selling to Iger and Kushner, Mark Walter, had purchased the Lakers just over a year ago. Selling a franchise this quickly is exceedingly rare, with this asset class being viewed as one of the most prestigious and scarce out there. A potential factor, Walter is currently under investigation from the FBI, DOJ and SEC for potential fraud across his business empire, with Bloomberg reporting that Walter has been in talks with investors to raise money to pay down the loans he's being investigated for. Now, Iger, the longtime CEO of Disney, is pretty familiar to the public. Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, is a little less so. Kushner runs Thrive Capital, a VC fund, and is the co-founder of Oscar Health. He currently owns a minority stake in the Miami Heat, which he'd have to sell if the Lakers purchase goes through. The Lakers offseason has been an interesting one, with LeBron James leaving the team, and now an out-of-the-blue sale of the franchise. The Athletic reporting, one agent who represents a Lakers starter, respond to the news with a simple message, what the F is going on? So Neal, what the F is going on here?

**Neal Freyman** (4:13)
It's a good question. One does not flip an NBA team like it's a house, and that's why this is being called the most shocking franchise sale in NBA history. And there was no indication that flipping the Lakers was Walter's intention from the beginning. He also owns the Dodgers, and he was kind of merging the two teams, sharing staff and resources to seemingly create one super team in LA, the Lakers and the Dodgers together. And more reporting shows that this was not necessarily a fire sale, but it came together very quickly. Looks like just in the past few days, Kushner and Iger called up Walter, maybe even Sunday. Today is what, Thursday? So this came together just in the early parts of this week. Walter was not exactly shopping this around. So it suggests that something else was at play here besides, okay, my time is up, because of course, there wasn't that much time that he was the owner of the Lakers to begin with. Meanwhile, Iger and Kushner had their sights set on another NBA franchise, one that is coming to Vegas. They were the leading players to take over, become owners of the new Vegas franchise. So none of this went according to plan, which is why you had the entire ownership class and the rest of the NBA world saying, yes, what the F is going on? Seems like there are a lot of things going on beneath the surface.