Mark Walter’s decision to sell the Lakers has one immediate takeaway for the Dodgers: it does not appear to change his commitment to baseball in Los Angeles.
Walter, the Dodgers’ chairman and control person, bought the club out of bankruptcy in 2012. Now, according to multiple reports, his move to unload the Lakers is being handled separately from his plans for the Dodgers, which he intends to keep in his larger business empire.
The timing has turned heads. Walter agreed to buy a majority stake in the Lakers from the Buss family only 14 months ago, yet he is already moving on from that deal. The Wall Street Journal reported that he recently came under scrutiny from federal investigators over whether private-credit deals tied to his companies amounted to fraud, and the paper noted there is little precedent for selling a sports asset that quickly.
Walter’s sports reach goes well beyond the Dodgers. His portfolio also includes the Lakers, the Sparks, Chelsea F.C., the Professional Women’s Hockey League, and stakes in Formula One, NASCAR and Indycar.
His TWG Global site also lists financial services, insurance, artificial intelligence and merchant banking among its sectors. In 2026, Sports Business Journal named him Executive of the Year for the way he has managed that sprawling collection.
Even the WNBA’s Sparks are reportedly not affected by the Lakers sale to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.
There has also been some crossover inside Walter’s sports world. Under his ownership, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and special advisor Farhan Zaidi worked as advisors to Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka.
“Farhan is spending a lot of time helping Mark in all of his different interests, I’ve got a pretty full-time gig" with the Dodgers, Andrew Friedman said in January. "That being said, we’re all kind of under this TWG umbrella and it’s about providing resources to one another and whatever benefits we can get, kind of collaborating, that’s kind of how we see it. Anything that’s kind of under Mark’s umbrella, it’s kind of on all of us to be able to work together and achieve the best outcomes for TWG.
"Still a full-time job [with the Dodgers], definitely not taking my eye off the ball, but just having really good conversations with Rob Pelinka. Farhan has jumped in there some and Rob came out to our Dodger organization town hall and did a Q&A with [Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes] and myself. Just all kind of leaning in together to work together and try to figure out the best ways to bring as many championships to Los Angeles as we can.”
If Zaidi and Friedman step away from Lakers duties once the NBA approves the sale, that would simply leave them with more room to focus on baseball.
Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten has described Walter’s role in the organization in plain language.
"It's one vote," Kasten said, when asked about his relationship to the Dodgers' many co-owners. "Even in this case, no one else [in the ownership group] has a vote.
It's Mark Walter, and Mark Walter delegates everything to me, and through me to the rest of the organization. I will go weeks or even months without hearing from Mark because he is doing bigger and more important things than us.”
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