During his post Board of Governors news conference in New York, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made it clear there weren’t any warning signs about the scrutiny surrounding Mark Walter before he became the majority owner of the Lakers.
Walter, who had been the Dodgers controlling owner since 2012 and a Lakers minority owner in 2021, agreed to purchase the majority ownership stake of the Lakers from the Buss family in June 2025 at a valuation of $10 billion.
Three months later, the FBI seized Walter’s phone and computer in September 2025 as federal prosecutors started a wide-ranging investigation into the financial dealings of Walter’s businesses.
And one month later, in October 2025, Walter was officially approved as the Lakers majority owner and purchased the franchise.
“I will say at the time that we vetted Mark Walter to be the principal governor of the team, again, he was already a part owner, minority owner in the Los Angeles Lakers. We went through the full process we all do,” Silver said Tuesday. “We spoke to governmental agencies. We spoke to, in the case of Mark Walter, a heavily regulated insurance agency. We spoke to other leagues in which he has investments. We found no red flags.”
After less than a year of leading the franchise, Walter sold the majority ownership of the Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger in August at a historic valuation of $12.5 billion.
There’s been an ongoing investigation into Walter’s business empire.
Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, released a statement in late August defending business practices and denying any wrongdoing.
“Even to this day, as you know, these are — call them allegations,” Silver added. “There are issues that are now being looked into. Independent of Mark Walter choosing to sell his team right now, he was not being investigated by our league. I don’t know what’s happening in other leagues right now…I had no prior notion that he was intending to sell his team until I heard from the buyers that they had a handshake with him.”
