洛杉矶湖人队估值125亿美元创纪录

We're taking a look at sports franchises trading at record valuations, player compensation, uh, reaching new highs. College athletes now sharing revenues. Gambling streaming had taken over the sport. And you've been along for the ride. You've seen the evolution of the NFL and sports rich writ large. And I do kind of want to start with the valuation question because as we speak, we're right now talking about a potential sale of the Los Angeles Lakers at $12.5 billion, the most ever for a franchise alone.

And I am curious, not so much about whether that's worth it, but what $12.5 billion signals overall about just how much sports in the US has changed? It signals that sports has become the number one form of televised entertainment. And there are so many ancillary revenue flows, whether it's gambling, as you mentioned, or merchandising or naming rights, that the valuations have blasted through the stratosphere. Um, when I began back in 1976, two teams, Seattle and Tampa Bay, came in the NFL.

Their purchase price was $16.5 million. Just a year ago, the Lakers sold for $10 billion. A year later, 12.5 and a football team, Seattle, sold for 9.6. It's showing their health and the fact that there's a finite amount of these teams, and it's a robustly profitable and fun business to be in. Well, there is certainly a scarcity pricing effect. What about the other side of the equation, which is all the new investors that seem to be coming into this space, partly because some of the investment rules have been loosened, most recently for the NFL, allowing PE firms to take a stake.

The MLB has obviously been sort of a pioneer in that space, the NBA as well. And now you think of this ownership group assuming they do get it of Joshua Kushner. And then Bob Iger of course ran Disney for several years. The obviously no stranger, of course, to the sports world. But what does that say about the complexion of the types of people who are buying into this? They used the term middle class billionaire. And so the new owners are not middle class in their lives.

They're multiple billionaires. And they've been successful in another field. And they look at this as a content play that gives them multiple revenue streams, um, coming in from all sorts of ways and the ability to dominate. Um, so you have, uh, these are not family owned franchises anymore. These are people who've made their fortune in the rough and tumble free enterprise system. And now when they have billions, they want to have a franchise.

Uh, I do, I just have to ask that I sit here in New York City and, of course, of this city was electric a few months ago when the Knicks won the championship. I mean, if the Lakers can command 12.5 billion, and not to say that the Knicks are up for sale or anything, uh, is that sort of the floor for the next big market team that does come to market? Well, I think if you go back into the NFL, the Cowboys are valued at $13 billion.

But I think that they must have been jumping for joy in every major sports, uh, commissioner's office to look at these valuation prices, because each one will build on the last one and we'll have 15 million. 20 billion. Uh, well, this will continue to expand over time. Um, yeah. Jumping for joy. Certainly. I do have to ask about where the players will fit into all this. After all, they are the ones who effectively build these franchises.

They are the ones who get the butts in the seats, so to speak. Um, salaries are capped as a share of revenue, at least certainly in the NFL, uh, in a lot of other leagues. franchise. Appreciation, though, is not revenue. Uh, is this now a time where we need to start having a more formal conversation about how the athletes, if at all, share in some of these franchise valuations, that there's a revenue split from all the designated gross revenue that comes into a sport like football.

So it's about 53% for management, 47% of owners. But I don't think it's going to take players association's very long to say were the, uh, key to building this game, you know, is just on the field. Uh, shouldn't we also share in some of the equity appreciation? So this now becomes, I mean, so the next big labor fight you think this may be it will be about negotiating, uh, you know, team equity, league wide revenue participation or compensation linked to these franchise values.

I certainly think that with the kind of liquidity events we're seeing in the record sales prices, that players will want a piece of that pie. I mean, you've negotiated against owners for decades for, uh, your player contracts. Um, how receptive do you think these owners and the league for that matters will be once this does actually show up on the negotiating table? Not very receptive initially, but, um, you know, our job is to craft win win scenarios where both parties interests come away being fulfilled.

Um, private equity is a big part of this, uh, of US sports now and certainly in the NFL. It seems like every time you're on Bloomberg, we talk to just some random person on Wall Street. They've taken a minority stake in some team or another. Um, is this VC money? Is this institutional capital, I should say. Is that good for the sport? I think it's fine. It's, uh. Um, it's it's economics. And to the extent you look at someone who runs a hedge fund like Mark Walter and what he's done with the Dodgers, um, they just won two back to back World Series, and they're probably headed to another one.

They've been superb. So it all depends on the leadership, not just the investment. And a team like the Dodgers that that has superior scouting player development uh stability uh a great culture will go ahead. So not all people investing from from the hedge fund world, um, are equally competent as managers. But, uh, the first ones we've seen sure are. Um, I do want to talk a little bit more about the players and specifically college players, uh, When you are out there negotiating contracts.

You know, players in theory, were not paid in college. Their big payday was when they signed that pro contract. Nil has changed that in a dramatic way. There are are numerous players about to take the field in college football? Uh, you know, in a week or so, uh, that are millionaires more or less. And by the time they enter the pros they will already have pretty significant contracts. How does that change the negotiation with the pro teams when effectively they're already coming out of college relatively rich?

Some players are. And there's a spectrum. Um, you know, it's changed everything about college sports. It's turned, um, 17 year olds into free agents who then, um, have different schools bid off against each other to see which deal they'll take. And then you have a second pilot, the Apple, which is the transfer portal. So you have players moving in every direction. Um, I think the best example is last year, the best quarterback coming out of high school was went to LSU, and I think they offered him $4 million.

So I just talked. And then along came a big Michigan alumni offered him $14 million and he transferred to Michigan. So it's a matter of unintended consequences. I'm always in favor of player compensation. But the fix the problem, which was players on the college campus who are being left at a lower standard of living than their non-athletic peers who could work to supplement their income, didn't need $15 million. They would have been happy with $10,000.

But the end of the season, they held on to tight. And now we have a system that is the law of unintended consequences. There are no guardrails. There really is no universal form of regulation. The marketing directors of players are hiring may not be qualified at all. Yeah. And, uh, but they don't have to be certified. I mean, what's the potential solution? Like, what would you propose as a reform? And we should point out, there is bipartisan legislation that is trying to work its way through Congress that would partially add