The new Lakers ownership group isn’t thinking small.
Fresh off the franchise’s record-setting $12.5 billion sale, the buyers led by Joshua Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger are reportedly telling prospective investors that the Lakers could be worth at least $30 billion within 10 years, according to The Wall Street Journal. That figure appears in an investor presentation circulated by Kushner’s Thrive Capital.
And that’s the conservative case.
Under more favorable assumptions, the group reportedly believes the Lakers could climb all the way to $62 billion. The $30 billion projection rests on the idea that television and streaming rights will roughly double in value over the next decade.
Even by NBA standards, the scale here is staggering. The Lakers are already projected to bring in about $681 million in revenue in 2026, with ticketing and media rights as the biggest drivers. By the end of 2037, the plan says annual revenue could top $1.6 billion.
Getting from here to there would not be painless for fans. Thrive reportedly sees about $150 million in near-term revenue that could be unlocked by 2028, and one of the biggest levers is ticketing.
The group wants to reclaim roughly 6,000 season tickets currently held by brokers and shift them into single-game inventory. In that setup, the average single-game ticket price would rise from $217 to $361.
There’s more baked into the plan. The ownership group reportedly believes it can find between $40 million and $75 million in additional sponsorship revenue while also targeting at least $20 million in operating cost efficiencies.
A huge piece of the whole forecast comes down to the NBA’s media money. In 2024, the league struck new media partnerships worth $77 billion over 11 years, a deal that more than doubled the fees shared with teams. Thrive reportedly thinks those distributions could double again once the current agreements run out.
The optimism isn’t coming out of nowhere. Forbes valued the Lakers at roughly $3 billion in 2016, and a decade later the club changed hands at $12.5 billion. That kind of rise has become the clearest proof of how much top-tier sports franchises have appreciated.
Still, a presentation to investors is one thing and an actual valuation is another. Hitting $30 billion would require major revenue growth, strong demand for NBA media rights, international expansion and the Lakers staying one of the league’s most valuable brands.
For Lakers fans, though, the bigger question is what all that financial ambition means on the court. Higher ticket prices, more sponsorships and tighter cost control may help the bottom line. The real test is whether the new ownership group matches that financial push with a serious commitment to building a championship team.
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