bob iger

So instead of the Dodgerfication of the Lakers, we’re getting the Disneyfication of the Lakers.

Hakuna Matata?

Yes, it’s weird and distressing, watching billionaires play catch with our ballclubs.

But this high-stakes game of hot potato that resulted in Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner acquiring the Lakers for $12.5 billion from Mark Walter less than a year after the Dodgers owner bought the NBA team?

For the Lakers, it really could end happily ever after.

Because we’re realizing you probably shouldn’t put all your proverbial eggs — or both of a city’s most beloved sports teams — in one guy’s basket. Especially if that one guy happens to be at the center of a federal loan investigation.

And if all it took, really, to get Walter to relinquish his ownership of the Lakers was $2.5 billion more than the reported figure he paid for them, then he wasn’t the right owner for the franchise anyway.

He wasn’t actually going to spin blue into purple and gold.

And Disney did give us some pretty great stories under Iger, didn’t it?

A native New Yorker, Iger, 75, grew up a Knicks fan. But he has also long been an L.A. basketball fan — though he has identified as a Clippers supporter. (Sorry, Clips, I think you’re down a fan.)

Lakers great Magic Johnson said he’s known Iger since the Showtime era, and gushed in an interview Wednesday with The Times’ Broderick Turner: “The great thing for Laker fans is Bob Iger loves basketball, loves the Lakers and I think that we couldn’t have a better person.

“Somebody that don’t know the Lakers, the tradition, that don’t know the city, that don’t know the passion that the fans have for the Lakers here in L.A.? Then I would have been like, ‘Oh man. They gotta learn all that.’

Bob Iger, then chief executive of Disney, addresses the media during the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge media event in 2019.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Well there’s no learning curve for Bob.”

And Angelenos know Iger. We don’t know Kushner except for his family ties. But Iger, we do.

Walter isn’t selling the Lakers to some rich guys without any L.A. cred. He’s selling to a basketball fan whom we’ve seen courtside at Lakers games. Someone who joined us in sharing our heartbreak on social media when Kobe Bryant died in 2020, calling him “a friend and a fan of ours, full of life and taken from us too soon.”

We recognize Iger; he’s the Disney guy. We know him for his successful tenures as chief executive of that beloved company, which were highlighted by innovative storytelling, savvy investment and expansion — including into sports. We know he helped turn ESPN into a TV juggernaut.

Before the sale to Walter, the Buss family, which owned and ran the Lakers for 46 years, was having trouble keeping up in a booming NBA. Player salaries are capped, but ownership’s resources matter much in terms of creating a competitive infrastructure of coaches, basketball operations, medical and scouting staffs.

So we were looking forward to seeing sweeping improvements when Walter took control and provided the organization with a much-needed financial infusion. After all, his Dodgers have won three World Series crowns and clinched the National League West in 12 of 13 seasons since 2012, when he and his partners bought the club for a then-MLB record $2.15 billion.

But as of Wednesday morning, we were still looking.

We thought the new Lakers’ regime would get to work without a second to spare. Yeah, they added a second row of seats courtside. And laid off more than a dozen employees.

We expected they’d beef up their scouting department. But they moved the G League team from the South Bay way out to the Coachella Valley, so even the most ardent fans in L.A. will have a hard time keeping an eye on the team’s prospects.

We expected, under Walter, that the Lakers would give their basketball brain trust an obvious boost.

But they’ve only flirted with filling the job of second assistant general manager. And they failed to poach anyone from the league’s most innovative front offices like the Dodgers did when they hired Andrew Friedman. Their big get was Rohan Ramadas, from the … New Orleans Pelicans, a team that made the playoffs only twice in the last eight seasons.

Iger and Kushner can do better. They better do better.

Joshua Kushner, founder and chief executive of Thrive Capital, speaks onstage during the Big Bets panel at the Fortune Global Forum 2024.

(Jemal Countess / Getty Images for Fortune Media)

I think they will.

This isn’t a fly-by-night proposition for Iger, who headed an effort by the Chargers and Raiders to build a stadium in Carson before Stan Kroenke built $5-billion SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

In 2024, Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, who is dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, acquired a controlling stake in the Angel City Football Club of the National Women’s Soccer League for $50 million, pushing its valuation to $250 million, a record for a women’s sports team.

Angel City hasn’t been winning, but they doubled the staff and wasted no time setting up a sizable new performance center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The WNBA’s Sparks, which Walter has owned since 2014, are still waiting for their own practice facility, which is now finally under construction in El Segundo.

“As lifelong NBA fans,” Kushner and Iger said in a statement, “we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world.”

Iger knows as much as anyone about successfully stewarding an iconic brand.

Now he could be the Imagineer to bring the 17-time champion Lakers back to the happiest place on earth — the NBA’s mountaintop.

Bob Iger’s purchase of the Lakers isn’t the former Disney boss’s first foray into ownership of a professional sports franchise in Southern California: Twenty-five months ago Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, acquired a controlling interest in soccer club Angel City for $50 million.

And while the NWSL is a long way from the NBA — and $50 million is a long way from the $12.5 billion the basketball team sold for Wednesday — the Iger family’s management of the women’s soccer team may hint at what’s in store for the Lakers.

Spoiler alert: it’s not all good.

Iger’s investment pushed Angel City’s valuation to $250 million, making it the world’s most valuable women’s professional sports franchise. And six months after taking over the team, Bay cut the ribbon on a multi-million-dollar training complex at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, which added to the team’s worth.

“Bob and I were very clear about investing the resources in this team and the people who lead and manage it. And most certainly the women who play for it,” Bay said at the time. “We know how important it is to do our best to bring a championship to this city.”

Yet also under Iger and Bay’s leadership, Angel City’s average attendance has fallen more than 20% and the team has yet to make the playoffs or post a winning record. The roster does not have a superstar player or even a regular starter on the women’s national team — with the salary of defender Gisele Thompson, the team’s highest-paid player, ranked 19th in the 16-team league. And the club is on its fourth manager, including interim coaches, and its second president of business operations in two years as Bay maneuvers to put her own stamp on the team.

However Mark Parsons, Iger and Bay’s hand-picked sporting director, lauds the team’s new owners, saying his staff has doubled in his 20 months at Angel City and the club is finally headed in the right direction.

“They gave us the resources,” said Parsons, who previously built struggling teams into NWSL finalists in Washington and Portland. “They’ve delivered upon that. We are investing in sporting staff and resources and facilities and consultants and experts around the world to support our athletes.

“Probably as good as anyone right now.”

Parsons said he speaks frequently with Bay, who has been hands-on in running Angel City. Iger will likely be the more active partner in managing the Lakers.

“Willow is one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around in my life, never mind my career,” Parsons said. “Spending time with Willow and Bob is an education in leadership and life. They are really special leaders.

“The best compliment I could give them is when I was in my final interview, who they were in that moment was the same people I’ve met when we’ve had good moments or stressful moments to navigate together.”

Former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner have hired investment bankers and discussed making a bid for the National Basketball Assn. expansion team in Las Vegas, according to people familiar with their plans.

The bid would be for a majority investment in the team, according to the people, who asked to not be identified because the discussions are private. The NBA’s board of governors approved the exploration of a potential franchise expansion in Las Vegas and Seattle in March.

Iger and Kushner are discussing making the bid through Thrive Eternal, a company set up by Kushner’s firm to invest in iconic brands and cultural assets. The company operates as a holding company, structured to raise new capital and make investments into businesses without a set exit timeline. Iger is involved with Thrive as an advisor.

It’s unclear what the size of the bid and the valuation of the franchise would be. Representatives for Thrive Capital and Iger declined to comment.

Iger, who took over as CEO of Disney from 2005 to 2020 and then again from 2022 to March of this year, had a tenure marked by acquiring marquee entertainment franchises and expanding them, including Pixar, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. The executive previously bought a controlling stake in Angel City Football Club, a women’s soccer team, with his wife, Willow Bay. A big basketball fan, he’s had a lot of experience with the NBA through Disney’s ESPN sports networks.

Kushner, meanwhile, has been building an investment portfolio of tech startups for decades, from investing early into OpenAI and Instagram, and working on dozens of incubations through his venture firm, Thrive Capital. The venture firm has total assets under management of more than $50 billion, according to a regulatory filing. Earlier this year, the firm raised more than $10 billion for its largest fund ever. The NBA discussions show the latest iteration in how Thrive is expanding beyond its roots of investing in technology startups, into also influencing culture through entertainment and sports.

Announced in April, Thrive Eternal, which operates a permanent capital vehicle, raised its initial capital from existing Thrive investors. “These are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology,” Kushner said in a social media post. “In a world shaped by abundant intelligence where creation scales and distribution fragments, we believe they will matter even more.”

Thrive Eternal’s first investment, though not a controlling stake, was backing a Major League Baseball team, the San Francisco Giants. The capital of that deal is set to go toward the Giants’ Oracle Park and its surrounding real estate, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg previously reported.

Mascarenhas writes for Bloomberg.