湖人交易引富豪竞购潮，体育资产成投资热点

Bob Iger and Josh Kushner were looking at the NBA expansion team in Las Vegas, and then the price was getting high is what Iger told me. And at some point, a little birdie or an intermediary suggested or told Bob Iger and Josh Fisher, hey. You should go look at the Lakers. And sure enough, that had to be on Saturday or Sunday. And some seventy two hours later, maybe ninety hours later, they had a deal. You know, they were looking in Vegas.

Yeah. They were gonna start a team from scratch, Randall. What happened? I really think that there's a Walmart family involved or a Walton family involved, and there's a couple other groups involved in Las Vegas, including Bill Foley, who's the older of the gold owner of the Golden Knights. And then you have Mark Lazarie and a group known as the Las Vegas Jacks. When you have that many groups involved naturally, that competition is going to drive the price high.

Yeah. Now Josh Kushner and Bob Iger were considered favorites. However, if they say it's high, I can only imagine that is it. I I would guesstimate that it's over $10,000,000,000. I I gotta go from the Lakers to the Knicks. I'm a Knicks fan. I'm sorry. I gotta go there, guys. And Randall and I, we were at the New York Knicks parade, so we did that together too. We had a great time out there. But now all this, the Knicks moving closer to this New York Rangers spin off.

I mean, what's going on? Is this going through? I think so. I think, you know, the Knicks are or Madison Square Garden Sports Corporation is targeting separating the rangers business from the knicks business. And so what this will mean is that Madison Square Garden Sports Corporation will become the Madison Square Garden Knicks Corporation, and then there will be a separate rangers business. What's expected to happen is this is going to extract value.

This is going to figure out the difference between the Knicks business and the Rangers business. And, you know, James Dolan has said that he is has no plans of selling either team. But once you see the value of those teams, who's to say he couldn't get $2,000,000,000 for 20% of the team or maybe even 15% of the team? Enter Jeff Bezos. I know. Not to be left out of this game as Randall reports. Fenway Sports Group from beautiful Boston selling a minority stake in Liverpool.

So he's got 30% of the team or the franchise, Randall. Is this Delivered next day. Dope. Yeah. By drone. Just saying. Is is this a vanity piece or an investment? Yeah. I think it's a bit of both, but the reality is that any team in the world that Jeff Bezos wants, he can ask. Well, They you know, at at some point, when you have as much money of just as Jeff Bezos does, someone could not be looking to sell, and he would say name your price, and they would say 25,000,000,000, and he would just write a check.

And so the fact that this is, you know, a 30% stake shows I think there's some interest, but the fact I don't think he's going to be involved on the day to day Mhmm. Is something I think that is very small in his world. You know what's interesting? I think the Feet had a piece too. And we talked about this on air with David Westin, of course, formerly head of ABC News. He knows Bob Iger. But we were talking about this idea, Randall, and I'm curious what you guys are hearing that the interest in sports teams kind of resilient to AI, artificial intelligence.

As we think about it in a world where we don't know, feel like a lot's gonna be impacted, sports maybe not so much. Live sports, certainly. I doubt it. I I doubt it right now. I think that AI will enhance sports experiences. You think about walking into a new arena. If you're a season ticket holder, is your experience now customized? Do is this does the the arena or does your app say welcome back, Carol? We'd love to have you eat the barbecue chicken you had last time.

Like, sort of those customized experiences is what I expect. Now long term, if someone's able to create a technology based league, something with robots or something that I think, is we're far away from, that's the only threat that I see, but it's not in sight. It's, it's a fantasy. And, Randall, I gotta ask you. Are you okay? Because there were so much sports breaking over the the headline just keep coming out yesterday.

Yes. He's still in his pajamas. Randall's always okay. Pajamas. Aren't you, Randall? Am I okay? Let me tell you. I'm not okay. This news when this news broke on Wednesday, I got a call maybe two minutes before Ramona Shelbourne at ESPN story went live, and it just took over my day. And then yesterday, it had to be around 6PM that the Knicks and Rangers announced that they were separating their business, and I quickly did that too.

So I don't need any news to break for the next week or so. Everybody just settle down, and let's get ready for the NFL season. I think we wanted you to come in studio and Tim Stenovec, my cohost during the week, and he was like I think he messaged him, if everybody would stop messaging me, I could get to Bloomberg. I did say that. He did. I did say that. Because later I was trying to get to to to Alexa around noon, and I did not get there until 02:30.

You got the best around he's like the coolest cucumber at Bloomberg News. You got this We we talked about this purchase of the Lakers, and he came in wearing a jersey. I was we were blown away. He came in prepared to play.