Kushner, whose older brother Jared is President Trump\u2019s son-in-law, founded the Thrive Capital firm in 2009 and has amassed a net worth estimated by Forbes at more than $5 billion. <\/p>\n
One of Thrive\u2019s subsidiaries, Thrive Eternal, focuses on sports acquisitions, purchasing and selling a stake in the NBA\u2019s Memphis Grizzlies before acquiring stakes in the Miami Heat and the MLB\u2019s San Francisco Giants , among others. <\/p>\n
Kushner and Iger were also championing a potential NBA expansion team in Las Vegas through Thrive Eternal until the opportunity to simply pay cash for the league\u2019s most iconic franchise presented itself.<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786759739_792_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Mark Walter<\/p>\n
(Michael Reaves \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Iger befriended the Lakers\u2019 current head coach JJ Redick when Redick played for the L.A. Clippers from 2013 to 2017. Iger has long been a Clippers fan, telling Redick on a podcast<\/a> in 2021 that he grew up a New York Knicks fan and their rivalry with the Lakers made rooting for the purple and gold when he moved to L.A. in 2000 \u201cnot in my DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n Why would he, without hesitation, become keen on the Lakers? <\/p>\n The Lakers are the \u201cepitome of an eternal asset,\u201d Iger told Bloomberg this week. <\/p>\n A spokesperson for Iger and Kushner said neither were available to speak to The Times until the sale of the Lakers is completed.<\/p>\n In April, Kushner wrote on social media<\/a> that Iger \u201cleads with boldness and conviction because he knows what he is building and why.\u201d Their mutual admiration began in 2018 when their wives \u2014 former models who went on to have successful business careers \u2014 became friends. <\/p>\n Iger joined Thrive for a short time in 2022 after resigning from<\/a> the Walt Disney Co., and returned to Kushner\u2019s firm in March after serving a second stretch<\/a> as Disney\u2019s chief executive from late 2022 to earlier this year.<\/p>\n Iger is a close friend of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who introduced Iger to his wife, Willow Bay, in the 1990s when she hosted the television show \u201cNBA Inside Stuff.\u201d Bay is now dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.<\/a> <\/p>\n Iger and Bay married in 1995 and moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2000. Soon, he was regularly attending Clippers home games. Owning the Lakers may never have crossed his mind until a week or so ago. Now he\u2019s all in.<\/p>\n \u201cGrateful, appreciative, excited to own something that\u2019s as iconic as the L.A. Lakers,\u201d Iger told the California Post<\/a>. \u201cJosh and I are avid NBA fans. And [to] have an opportunity to own not just any NBA team, but the L.A. Lakers is extraordinary from a life experience perspective and business perspective. It\u2019s still sinking in. We\u2019re very excited.\u201d<\/p>\n Bob Iger and Willow Bay married in 1995 and moved to Los Angeles in 2000.<\/p>\n (Ashley Landis \/ Invision \/ AP)<\/p>\n Iger acknowledged it is too soon to articulate a strategic plan.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are fans,\u201d Iger told the outlet. \u201cWe respect the value that\u2019s been created, both on the court and off. Our intention is to build this great franchise from a position of strength in many respects as an organization. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just premature to speculate at all about what we plan to do, because frankly, we haven\u2019t made any plans yet. Again, we go into this with an appreciation of who the Lakers are. And we just want to build value from today on.\u201d<\/p>\n Walter\u2019s decision to sell the Lakers shocked the sports world. In his short tenure as owner, the team said goodbye to LeBron James, gave Austin Reaves a long contract extension, traded for impact center Walker Kessler and signed several complementary players.<\/p>\n Walter is also majority owner of the Dodgers and the L.A. Sparks of the WNBA. He owns minority stakes in professional soccer teams Chelsea FC and RC Strasbourg Alsace and the Cadillac Formula One team. And he owns the entire Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League, which named its championship trophy after Walter.<\/p>\n It became public recently that federal officials were investigating his business empire<\/a>. The investigations by the U.S. attorney\u2019s office for the Southern District of New York, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Delaware insurance regulator are focused on $21 billion in possibly fraudulent loans<\/a> made by two Delaware life insurers that Walter owns to companies also tied to him. Such potential conflicts of interest must be reported to regulators.<\/p>\n Walter and his firm have denied any wrongdoing. He has declined to answer questions about the sale and whether it was connected to the probe. <\/p>\n The Dodgers have said Walter has no intention of selling that team.<\/p>\n Iger, in interviews this week, described the deal as happening very quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were involved in pursuing the new franchise in Vegas,\u201d Iger told the California Post. \u201cAnd while that happened, it was suggested to us that maybe Mark Walter would be interested in selling his stake in the Lakers. And we immediately decided that given the value of the franchise and the iconic nature of the team, that we would be really smart to pursue it. The deal came together in three days. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n Simple, yet shocking. <\/p>\n \u201cI love surprising the world,\u201d Iger said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Walter said he loved owning the Lakers but decided recently it was time to sell. Bob Iger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":997082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,400985,254892,58610,2961,400986,224,5337,400989,400987,8662,400988,53802,4663,27583,74769,287336,2452,247701],"class_list":["post-1001475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-iger","tag-kushner","tag-l-a-clippers","tag-la","tag-lakers-mega-deal","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-nba-franchise","tag-new-york-knicks-fan","tag-sale","tag-shocking-decision","tag-sport-team","tag-stake","tag-thrive","tag-value","tag-walter","tag-week","tag-willow-bay"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117097096279421965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786759741_200_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n