How Jeanie Buss will factor into Lakers after $10 billion sale

Jeanie Buss and her family have agreed to sell their majority stake in the Lakers, but that doesn’t mean her involvement with the franchise is over. 

The 63-year-old Buss will stay as the Lakers’ governor and continue to run the team for “at least a number of years,” according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, a plan new majority owner Mark Walter “fully endorsed.”

On Wednesday afternoon, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported the Buss family was selling its majority ownership to Walter, a businessman who also owns the Dodgers, for approximately $10 billion. 

That figure set a new record as the most expensive sale of an American professional sports team, topping the $6.1 billion sale of the Celtics in March. 

Jerry Buss, Jeanie’s father, bought the Lakers for $67.5 million in 1979 as part of a deal that included the Kings and what is now known as the Kia Forum. 

When Jerry died in 2013, his stake in the franchise passed on to his six children, with Jeanie taking the reins as the governor.

She’s held that role ever since, and evidently will retain it for the foreseeable future. 

The situation has parallels to Mark Cuban’s sale of the Mavericks in 2023. 

When Cuban sold his majority stake to the Adelson family for $3.5 billion, he reportedly agreed to stay on with the franchise and keep control of basketball operations, as he had done before selling. 

But seven months after the deal, ESPN reported that Cuban would no longer be in charge of basketball operations after all. 

Cuban, though, did not remain governor of the Mavericks after he sold the team, unlike Buss. 

It remains to be seen how Buss’s role with the Lakers will evolve over time, but for now, she will be running the show — even after her family pocketed the record-setting $10 billion.