Brian Windhorst laid out a striking financial picture of the Lakers on the latest Hoop Collective podcast, and the headline number was hard to miss: the franchise reportedly pulled in $129 million in profit last season.
Windhorst was discussing figures reported by The Wall Street Journal and said the Lakers brought in $680 million in revenue. He contrasted that with the Knicks and Rangers, which he noted report their numbers together because the Knicks are a public company.
“The Lakers made $680 million. The Knicks, again, the Knicks are a public company, so they have to, um, they have to announce their stuff.
Um, the Knicks and Rangers, um, they report their stuff together. So again, the Lakers’ revenue was $680 million.
The Knicks and Rangers’ revenue was $1.1 billion. Their playoff revenue was $67 million.
I don’t even-that feels low to me.”
Windhorst also pointed to how playoff money can be especially valuable because player salaries do not rise in the postseason.
“The thing about playoff revenue is you don’t have to pay the players any extra money. The players’ salaries don’t, um, change based on the playoffs.
The Knicks and Rangers’ profit last year was $30 million-$29 million. I feel like there’s probably a lot of things baked into that, but, um, not sure.”
Then he got to the Lakers’ bottom line.
“I saw if it says what the Lakers’ actual profit was… The Wall Street Journal said that the Lakers’ profit was $129 million.”
That profit figure stands out even more when placed next to the Knicks and Rangers. Windhorst’s numbers show the Lakers making more than four times the combined reported profit of those New York teams, even though the Lakers generated roughly $420 million less in revenue.
The comparison also underscores how much can get lost between gross revenue and what a team actually keeps. Madison Square Garden reports the Knicks and Rangers together, while the Lakers are privately held, which makes detailed financial information about the franchise far harder to pin down.
One major factor working in the Lakers’ favor is their local television deal. Their long-term agreement with Spectrum SportsNet reportedly brings in about $180 million per year and runs through 2032. That comes on top of the money teams receive through the NBA’s national media contracts and other league-wide sharing.
The Lakers’ reported profit is also notable in light of the franchise’s soaring valuation. In 2024, the Buss family agreed to sell the controlling ownership of the Lakers in a deal that valued the team at around $10 billion. Two years later, Mark Walter, who bought it from the Buss family, agreed to sell to a group led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at an approximately $12.5 billion valuation.
The bigger picture is clear enough from Windhorst’s numbers: even when another pair of major New York teams brings in more total revenue, the Lakers still come out ahead in profit. For a franchise already valued in the billions, that $129 million figure only adds to the sense that ownership stakes in the Lakers remain among the most coveted assets in sports.
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