The Lakers at $12.5B: a venture firm's third sports position, and everyone's new comparable

Joshua Kushner and former Disney chief executive Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion, which Fortune reports would be the largest sale price for a professional sports team in US history ^[1][2]. The deal still needs approval from the NBA's Board of Governors ^[3], and until it closes it is a proposal; after it closes it is the number against which every other franchise gets marked.

The buyer profile is the interesting part. Kushner founded Thrive Capital in 2011 at the age of 26 ^[4], and the firm has backed Instagram, Spotify and OpenAI ^[5]. Thrive was most recently valued at $12 billion ^[6], so the agreed price for the Lakers exceeds the reported value of the firm most associated with the buyer by roughly $500 million ^[7]. Kushner's own net worth is estimated at $5.2 billion ^[8], about 42 percent of the purchase price ^[9]. That arithmetic tells you this is syndicated capital with a partner and, presumably, structure. The source material does not disclose the equity split with Iger, the debt, or the underwriting.

This is also not Thrive's first move into the category. The firm already holds minority stakes in the San Francisco Giants and the Miami Heat ^[10], and Iger began working with Thrive in September 2022 ^[11]. A control position in a marquee franchise, arriving after two passive stakes and a roughly three-year working relationship with an operator who ran a media company ^[10][11][1], is the sequencing of a firm building a book in an asset class. It is not the sequencing of a trophy purchase.

Kushner has been explicit about the underlying method. He told Fortune's Global Forum in November 2024 that Thrive is "extremely concentrated in people and ideas," that it believes in "the Munger-Buffet way of the world, power of compounding," and that it aims to hold companies "for a very long period of time" ^[12][13]. He also said that in technology "there's an ephemerality to technology" and that the assets are limited, comparing OpenAI to "Fifth Avenue," a jewel to own for decades ^[14][15]. A scarce, non-reproducible, regulated-supply asset held indefinitely describes a top-market NBA franchise more literally than it describes a software company.

The credibility for that pitch comes from one position. Thrive led a round in OpenAI in early 2023, investing nearly $130 million at a $29 billion valuation ^[16], has put in more than $2 billion since inception ^[17], and invested roughly $1 billion at a $285 billion valuation in December ^[18]. OpenAI is now valued at around $895 billion ^[19], about 30.9 times the early-2023 mark and 3.1 times the December mark ^[20][21]. Those are private-round marks, not exits, and the compounding is unrealised.

What to watch: the Board of Governors vote, which is the only gate the source identifies ^[3]; whether the $12.5 billion print gets used to revalue Thrive's existing Giants and Heat stakes ^[10][1]; and any disclosure of how the equity and debt are actually arranged, since the price sits at roughly 6.3 times everything Thrive has put into OpenAI to date ^[22]. A record comparable set by a venture firm is only an asset-class signal if the cash flows behind it are ever shown.