Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979. He paid $67.5 million. In 2025 a sale valued those assets at $10 billion. People hail it as the best sports deal ever. Spencer Jakab, in Friday's Heard on the Street column, says it was solid, not legendary. About 11.5% a year. Then his heirs went to court.
Other owners did even better. Ron Diamond runs a group of family offices. He says some teams were bought long ago for thousands of dollars upfront, a few for just hundreds. The Ross-Arctos Sports Franchise Index tracks what teams are worth. Since 1961 it has grown about 13% a year, compounded. U.S. stocks did around 10%. A lot of those values come from teams selling small stakes to funds. Jakab expects more of those deals.
Here's the catch. Some 173 billionaire families own a piece of a team. Diamond says most of them aren't set up to keep the family in control, because the ownership is so tangled. Exhibit A is the Buss family. The heirs are fighting in court over whether to sell the stake they still hold. The team made the fortune. Keeping the family on one page was the harder job.
Who's buying now
Family offices are the new buyers. These are private firms that run a rich family's money. They care more about returns than sitting courtside. Bank of America's private bank says 4 in 10 family offices hold a sports investment. Younger principals, Gen Z and millennials, are the most interested. Private equity and Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds are in too. Jakab thinks the better returns may now sit in the less glamorous corners of a $2.5 trillion market. Minority stakes. Media rights. Stadiums. Lending. College sports.
Diamond explains why U.S. teams hold their value. Each team is a protected local monopoly, and the league doesn't print new ones. TV money is pooled. Salaries are kept somewhat in check. A losing team doesn't get dropped to a lower league. European soccer clubs lack those shields, and they sell for less. There are a few public ways in. Madison Square Garden Sports (MSGS), Atlanta Braves Holdings (BATRA) and Rogers Communications (RCI) are the three Jakab names. MSG Sports closed at $389.48 on Thursday, Oct. 22, down $22.89. None of the three sit in any of our model books.
Our read
This is an Estate story with a Behavioral twist. The Buss family had one of the best assets in sports and still ended up in court. The return was fine. The exit was the problem. A team, a family company, a building, a lake house. None of them split nicely among several heirs. One wants cash. One wants to keep it. The fight can start the day the founder is gone. We think most families won't ever own a team. We also think the lesson fits every family that owns one big thing that can't be divided.
Here's the check for this week. Look at the one asset in your own plan that can't be split, the family business, the rental, the cabin. Find the document that says what happens to it when you're gone. If there's no buy-sell agreement, no operating agreement with an exit clause, and no letter naming who decides, that's the gap. Put a date on fixing it. The Buss heirs are now settling in court what many families settle on paper. A roof is easier to patch on a dry day. If you'd like a second set of eyes on the asset that can't be divided, bring it to your next review.