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Mark Walter is not selling the Dodgers, his people say. Stan Kasten, the Dodgers’ president, said it again Friday. The team, as a Los Angeles Times headline put it, is the “crown jewel” of Walter’s sporting empire.
Walter was not selling the Lakers, either, until he suddenly did last week. And, amid a cash crunch triggered by a federal investigation into insurance firms his companies control, potential bidders for the Dodgers are monitoring the situation closely.
If Walter were to sell the Dodgers, a long line of interested parties could include the runner-up when he bought the team in 2012: Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times.
On Friday, Soon-Shiong said through a representative that he would be interested in leading an investment group should Walter decide to sell the team.
Questions remain over whether the blowback from Mark Walter’s financial difficulties will hit the Dodgers.
“We respect Mr. Walter, and we want to make it clear we have not spoken with him,” said Chuck Kenworthy, the family attorney for Soon-Shiong. “If at some point he would like to discuss the Dodgers, we would be very open to talking.”
Walter’s TWG Global did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Dodgers could command between $10 billion and $13 billion — at the higher end, three times as much as the record sale price for a major league team — a high-ranking industry source told The Times on the condition of anonymity.
In 2012, Soon-Shiong joined hedge-fund titan Steve Cohen in trying to buy the Dodgers, with Cohen as the controlling partner. Walter and his partners won the bidding at $2.15 billion, well above the $1.6 billion runner-up bid of Soon-Shiong and Cohen.
While the Buss siblings battles to sell their Lakers shares, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong says he won’t sell his stake in the team.
In 2020, Cohen bought the New York Mets for $2.4 billion. The record price tag for a major league team: $3.9 billion for the San Diego Padres, officially sold this week to an investment group led by a married couple: Jose E. Feliciano, the founder of Clearlake Capital in Santa Monica, and Kwanza Jones, an artist and enterpreneur.
The record price tag for any North American sports team: $12.5 billion, the valuation of the Lakers in the deal announced last week in which Walter agreed to sell to a group fronted by former Disney chief Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner.
Insurance regulators and federal investigators are looking into whether certain financial transactions between various entities controlled by Walter were properly disclosed to investors and compiled with regulations designed to protect them.
