ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne said the Lakers being sold for $12.5B to a group that had previously been linked to a potential expansion team in Las Vegas suggests the price for expansion teams is “going to be more than” the $6B-$8B range previously estimated. Earlier on Wednesday, Shelburne reported former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner had bought the majority stake in the Lakers from Mark Walter at a valuation of $12.5B. Shelburne, appearing on “The Pat McAfee Show,” said she believes the number for the Vegas expansion team is “climbing close” to what Walter paid for a controlling share in the Lakers last year, which was $10B. Shelburne said Iger and Kushner, who had been linked to having interest in the Vegas expansion team, at some point “go, ‘Well, why would we buy an expansion team for $10B, and then have to spend another $2.5B to build the stadium in Vegas without at least calling Mark Walter and seeing if we could buy the Lakers for $12.5B?” She added Las Vegas is “pretty much an L.A. market,” adding, “why buy Vegas when you can buy L.A., when you can buy an established team and brand with a superstar that’s in place for basically the same amount of money that they were going to have to go for in Vegas?” (“The Pat McAfee Show,” 8/12).
The Lakers purchase by Iger and Kushner’s group “leaves the door open for other suitors” of the Las Vegas team, including billionaire Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband, Bill Laurie; a group led by Golden Knights owner Bill Foley; and the Las Vegas Jacks group, led by former NBA owner Jerry Colangelo. MAGI, led by Basketball HOFer Magic Johnson, also has “expressed interest in pursuing a Las Vegas expansion team” (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 8/12).