Jeanie Buss: Inside the $10 billion Lakers sale

0:00Meet Klaviyo, your brand's new best friend. With all your data in one place, Klaviyo knows you and your customers. Its AI agents build campaigns from one prompt and answer questions 24-7. Always on brand, always with your OK. Go to klaviyo.com slash best friends. I think about the first game after Kobe passed away and LeBron came out and addressed the fans. And it was kind of like, how are we going to play basketball, this tragedy? And he addressed the fans and he said, this is what we do. We come together and we play basketball. all. The Lakers are bigger than any one owner or any one player or any one championship.

0:46It's about how it continues on and how it brings us together as a community.

0:56How do you know when it's time to say goodbye? My guest today, Lakers owner Jeannie Buss, is still working through it. That's because she recently made the decision to sell a majority stake of the Lakers at a valuation of$10 billion. Jeannie's dad, Dr. Jerry Buss, bought the Lakers in 1979 and immediately turned the team into the Showtime Lakers. They won 10 NBA championships before he passed away in 2013, leaving the team for Jeannie to run. Now, that's a tough act to follow, but under her leadership, the Lakers have won a championship and landed big-name players like LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and now Luka Doncic.

1:39When Jeannie and I sat down, I was excited to discuss the sale, but also legacy, her dad's legacy, her own legacy, and what she wants to do next. And of course, we also had to discuss someone near and dear to us both, Kobe Bryant. I'm Maria Sharapova, and this is Pretty Tough.

2:05Jeannie, thank you so much for being here today. 2025 was such a pivotal year for you personally and professionally, and we'll get to all of that. But I thought I'd start this conversation with a quote that I read from you. Sometimes being underestimated actually gives you an advantage because you're discounted and people let down their guard. I can relate a lot to that, but I'd love for you to explain that a little further. Yeah, for me, it was allowing me to like, like stay in the room, meaning people would often overlook me. And so that meant I was always in the middle of things. And people let down their guard and might say things that I could use and learn from.

2:51And so I always welcomed people who just ignored me and used that to my advantage. Was there a specific instance where you remember that you really used it to your advantage? Yeah, you know, oftentimes there would be conversations that two owners of teams would be having and, you know, I'd be sitting right there and they acted as if I was just not existing and, you know, might have let down their guard and said some things that I would keep up here so I would remember and use it to my advantage. And has that shifted over time? Have you noticed the difference? Yeah, I think after, you know, winning a championship and accomplishing a lot of things, I think now people take me a little bit more seriously.

3:55There's an element of respect in the room. Yes. Yeah, I think I relate to that a little bit of being, you know, always being forced into one lane and not being accepted for other things. And whether it's just being an athlete, but also feeling like perhaps there is something else that I could try and get at, but wanting to be respected for it. And those are the times when I felt like I would work extra hard because people didn't see my potential. And then I'd show them the other way around and tell them, well, you see, you didn't put all that, you know, in me. And now it's fueled a little fire.

4:29Well, you're so disarming because you're so talented as a tennis player and athlete that nobody would think that you have all this other capability as well. So, you know, I could see where that would have happened to you a lot because you're so super successful just as an athlete, which is, you know, that's a lot, but everything else that you've done. Yeah, I remember my dad, one of the first few really important meetings, negotiating a contract with Nike. My dad said, go into the room. And I was still a teenager. And I felt like, you know, from the executives there, like, why is this young girl in the room?

5:12And my father, and I felt it. And my dad would say, it's because her future and her worth is on the line. So she needs to pay attention. She needs to be here, even though I was young. Let's go back to the very beginning. You're 19 years old. You're at USC. You get a call from your dad and he says, will you be the GM of a tennis team? What was your reaction? Did you feel like, no dad, bring me in the big leagues of the Lakers? No, I, you know, it's funny because when you talk about your dad, you had a dad that empowered you and encouraged you. And so my dad was the same way. Maybe I wasn't ready for it necessarily, but he knew if he pushed me that, you know, he would find out if I was capable.

6:07and the idea of putting me in charge of a tennis team in the World Team Tennis League, the Billie Jean King League, you know, he would see how adaptable I was. My first response to him, because I was a student at USC, was, oh, good, I'm going to quit school because now I have a job. And he said, no, you have to finish school. You've got to take care of both things. And if you drop out of school, you can't have the job. So I had to do both. And, you know, that presented a challenge, but I was so excited. And that was, you know, the early 80s. And my very first act as general manager of the Los Angeles Strings, which was the name of the team, was to draft Martina Navratilova.

6:58Wow. So that was a pretty good position to be in. I also heard you had to make a call to Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe and get them to play at the forum. What happened was my dad in 1979 bought not only the Lakers, but the Kings hockey team, as well as the forum where they played. And when you have an NBA team and an NHL team in an arena, that takes up about 100 nights. But there's 250 empty nights. And so my dad wanted me to develop content to put into the arena. And tennis really was the, you know, it was, you know, the hottest thing. And he wanted to create kind of how, because the most annoying thing about tennis fans is when they would call up, you know, a month before the tournament and say, who's in the finals?

7:56And it's like, well, you got to see who wins. That isn't a tennis fan. Right. That's true. But that's, okay, a sports fan. They want to see the big matchup. They want to know who's playing, what time, where, what time can they show up. Exactly. And there's so many unknowns in tennis. And I assume that that may be challenging. So my dad said, I want to see John McEnroe play Jimmy Connors. Well, that— How did that phone call go? Because if you can make that phone call when you're 19 years old, I'm sure that prepares you for the many characters that you've faced in your lifetime. That took a year and a half to convince both guys to play because it was an exhibition.

8:37So they were paid an appearance fee and they didn't like playing each other. So, you know, it was tough enough to have to face each other, you know, in the semifinals at the U.S. Open. But to purposely choose to have to face your sworn enemy, but we were able to pull it off. And, you know, to this day, Jimmy Connors thinks he's my favorite player. John McEnroe thinks he's my all-time favorite player. I had to keep it that way. But what we did was we had the match. It was 1984-85. sold out the forum, broke the gross gate record for ticket sales that was broken, you know, about six months later when Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers played at the forum on New Year's Eve.

9:36But for a while, it was the biggest thing. And, you know, so we consistently brought in tennis events. I never had a chance to have you play. But I did play, when it was the Staples Center, I did play the year-end championships in L.A. and won that event. And I remember that was like my first experience, a real experience in California. And I just, I thought perhaps one day I could live here. Yeah, and the L.A. fans loved you. They love their stars. I'd love to hear, what were some of the qualities that your father saw in you as a 19-year-old? And how do you think that's changed as you both work together over the many years?

10:21He saw that I was resilient, that when I failed, I tried again. And he loved throwing me in the deep end. There was at one point in the early 80s where he sent me to Russia to negotiate with the cultural ministry because he wanted the Moscow Circus to come to Los Angeles and perform at the Forum. I know that's such a fun fact. Like I'm in my early 20s. I mean, I had lawyers. Oh, yeah. And I mean, it was, you know, before perestroika and it was like culture shock. But I was fearless because I didn't know what to be afraid of, to be honest with you. But my dad kept challenging me to, you know, let's see if she'll do this, if she's willing to put herself out there.

11:22And so he saw something in me that he continued to feed. Prior to this interview, I was thinking of how to approach the Lakers as a whole and just wrapping my head around the responsibility that you have as a female leader in this space. when I think of some of the biggest sport leagues, teams, companies, there's only a handful. And the Lakers must be at the top five of that list in terms of value, brand identity, not just in the United States, but internationally. What is that responsibility like for you as a female owner? You know, it's a community. And I know what our fans, what this team means to our fans.

12:16And you have to honor that. And, you know, my dad bought the team in 1979, but they had a following way before he bought the team. And they're going to continue to have a following well into the, you know, 50, 100-year future. So it's about, you know, honoring that community, treating the players like family. I think that we really haven't done a good job as a league to, you know, we have state-of-the-art care to develop our players, to have them play at their peak performance, but there's a big drop-off about when they retire and that transition from being a player and, you know, loved and being taken care of to what happens afterwards.

13:19And I feel like the Lakers are a, you know, umbrella, a purple and gold umbrella that, you know, family can stand behind and pull together. Right. If you were to compare the Lakers to a luxury brand, because when I look at you and I zoom out, I'm thinking of the Dior's of the world. How do you think of the Lakers? I think of the Lakers as like prime real estate, you know, like beachfront property. And, you know, that, you know, there's the brand and then there's the personalities that have driven the brand, like a Magic Johnson, like a Kobe Bryant, like a LeBron James. And now we have a future, you know, Hall of Famer and Luka Doncic who's playing for us.

14:18So it's the common— Oh, I know. We'll get to that. There's a lot to dig in there. And, you know, it's the greatness of the brand and everything that's come before, like Will Chamberlain and George Mikan. And, you know, that makes it easier for a person in my position because they don't, you know, players don't play for the owner or the governor or whatever you want to call it. They play to be up on the same board as Magic and Kobe and to, it elevates the greatness. So as a brand, it just perpetuates. I'd love to talk about how technology, how marketing have influenced the team. And I go back to Dr.

15:13Jerry Buss bringing in dancers in the timeouts. And he was the first to really bring entertainment to sport. Now that just seems like so natural and expected. but as someone that led that you now have to push that forward like what is the next thing and and where do you get inspiration from dr bus saw was the the marriage of sports and entertainment and that you know it's it's really putting on a show and it's all about the product on the court and making sure that the players have that platform to shine and to be the best that they can be. So, you know, that's what we continue to do. I think that, you know, as technology evolves, it's really important that we understand our consumer, how they want to consume our games, whether it's now on their phone, if it's about highlights, if they want to stream the games, or we have to listen to our customer and go where they are.

16:32And certainly the NBA fans skew younger than most professional leagues. So we are a league that has to always acknowledge what's the next thing that will keep our fans engaged. And certainly, you know, you could talk about, you know, the pros and cons about sports gambling. But we look at sports gambling as another way for fans to engage with our product. Certainly it brings an element that, you know, you have to keep the integrity of the game. And I think it probably puts a lot of pressure on our referees and officials because— Well, that's changed a lot in tennis. Yeah, exactly. And I imagine that's changing a lot in the NBA.

17:26Exactly. But you see that if you have a favorite team, you know, putting money on your favorite team just deepens your connection. Right. Yeah. And with the involvement of AI and seeing how artificial intelligence has impacted so many different sports in positive ways, one of the reasons why a fan comes and watches a live sport is for the human element, for the physicality, for the momentum shifts, for the drama. But yet, I'm sure you want to incorporate a lot of the new technology in how you see the team evolve. Yeah, I mean, anything that will help create defenses to understand other teams' tendencies, you know, artificial intelligence really hasn't been fully exploited yet in sports.

18:19And I expect our basketball operations to continue to bring in— Are the coaches using a lot of that now? Yeah, I mean, they do a lot of data analysis. So it's like having artificial intelligence to be able just to understand the data or process the data faster, you know, all of those things. So we have a really young coach in J.J. Redick who is— I love his energy, by the way. Yeah, he's, I mean, he is, it's like everything, he's so into the details into getting it right. Like he's a winner and he is the type to embrace whatever new opportunities come along. Yeah, I remember my coach spending hours putting together like video analysis where now that could be done in just a couple of minutes and saves him time on focusing on bigger and better things.

19:24You often speak about sharing a lot of the games with the fans, like sitting next to them, understanding how they became a fan. I feel like that is, it's so important, right? You're not just sitting there in a suite analyzing what's going on. You are directly with the source of Lakers Nation. Did you start doing that from the very beginning? I did. It's like, and my dad was the same way. And, you know, I mean, to this day, I, you know, meet people who will tell me, you know, how my dad touched their life, you know, just at a restaurant, you know. So I really enjoy getting to know the fans because everybody has a story.

20:11And the way they share it with me, and I especially love on social media when people send me pictures of their newborn babies with Laker. Sweet. I mean, it's like that's the most important thing in their life is their child. And they're like, I'm going to make them a Laker fan. I'm like, that's what we do one at a time. We make Laker fans. And it warms my heart. It touches me in a way that I will never tire of. I don't take it lightly, not only the money commitment, but also the time commitment. and taking space from their heart, you know, to love this team. Yeah. And, you know, knowing there's a lot of money and power behind the sport, there's also human beings, right?

21:08There are team members, there are the athletes, and I've seen your role grow into managing and almost being a mother to these, you know, team members, to these athletes on a daily basis and respecting them from a human being level and not someone that's in the public eye on a daily basis. Why is that so important to you? Because I've been on the other side of it. And, you know, one of the most important periods of my life for 15 years, I was, you know, in a relationship with coach Phil Jackson. And he really showed me the other side of an athlete in terms of, you know, what he's trying to create when he's coaching a team and creating that family that will sacrifice for each other.

22:06And I remember I used to, I got really in a big fight with him. It was right before Thanksgiving, and he was making the team practice on Thanksgiving Day. And I said, why are you making them practice? The season's so hard on them. Give them a day off. You know, I just went off on him, and he's like, Jeannie, calm down. He said, on Thanksgiving, you are to be with your family, and they'll have plenty of time to be with their family. but I'm also developing a family here. So we need our time together and they will have fun. And, you know, it just, it really showed me that they're more than one dimension.

22:56It isn't just about what happens on the court. The lives that they live in acknowledging who they are off the court was very important to Phil. and I've learned that lesson. I will continue that on. Doesn't make it any easier having to trade a player or cut a player, wave a player, but that bridge will always be there. Now, I understand hurt feelings when Shaquille O 'Neal was traded from the Lakers. He got his digs in and it took a few years, but he wanted to go into the Hall of Fame as a Laker. We retired his jersey and he asked me to be on the board of his foundation, which I am. You know, our relationship is as good now as it ever was, but, you know, you have to give players their space.

23:58Getting traded is really difficult. Yeah, I remember all about those practices on holidays because I used to be engaged to a Laker for many years, as you know, Jeannie. And I remember Phil saying, no, we have practice on Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving in December was my off season. So that's when I really had time at home. And I was like, is this practice really necessary? I'm sure you could do without it. But he had a foundation and he truly leaned into it. And he was a master. I remember all the books that he used to share with the players that they had to read on road trips. And I used to get myself a copy because I was like, if it works for the Lakers and it works for Phil Jackson, it is going to work for me.

24:46Last year marked a new era for the Lakers. You had an extraordinary trade. It was all over the news. Luka Doncic coming to the Los Angeles Lakers. Can you walk me through those 24 hours? In order to get a player of great value, you have to give up a player of great value. And the Dallas team wanted Anthony Davis, and he was on our team. And so conversations started, but it was important that they remain private and didn't leak out to the media because if a player is made aware of a pending trade, it could crater your entire season. So we're talking that those conversations started the beginning of January, right?

25:41I'll never forget. That's when all of Los Angeles was on fire. And were you part of those conversations? Yes. I mean, in order to trade somebody like Anthony Davis, it would have to be with approval. Not only that, but a first round draft pick. and certainly getting a player of Luca's caliber and his, you know, being at the beginning end of his career was just an extraordinary opportunity, but it required a lot of strategy and a lot of small steps in order to pull it off. And Rob Palenka, our general manager, was able to do that all with it out leaking to the media because I think Mark Cuban might have jumped in front of a train to keep it from happening.

26:37Well, he did a phenomenal job because nobody knew. Nobody knew, including Luca. And Anthony Davis. And Anthony Davis. And LeBron James. And LeBron James. And we had a game in New York at night. and so the coach knew that this was going to happen, but he still had to play the game and we won the game that night. It wasn't a distraction. And then all the world turned upside down. How does that work? Are you on that final 24th hour? Are you handed a piece of paper and you have to put your stamp on it? Yes, it's the NBA. They do what's called the trade call to make sure that every bit of the trade is agreed to and that we're— That it's happening.

27:36It's stamped. It's there. Yeah. I mean, I read your dad often told you that you have to be extremely patient, but once in a while you have to go from zero to 100. Was that one of those moments? It was absolutely one of those moments. And where my dad was trying to teach that to me was being a poker player, because he would say, Jeannie, people think poker is about the cards, but it's really not. It's about being patient. But once you have the right cards, you have to know when to go from zero to 100. and he said, I know you have the patience, but I'm not sure you have the ability to put your foot on the gas.

28:26And I like to think that I proved that to him many times now. That is so powerful. What a moment. Yeah. So funny. As I told you, as you came into the room, I was always, I spent so many years in LA and I felt like I was part of the Lakers nation. But since the trade, I'm so invested in the dynamic of the business, of the players, of seeing LeBron in his 23rd year, and yet seeing a young player come into the team to which you described was the saddest player you've ever seen join the Lakers nation in Luka Doncic. Explain that feeling, knowing that, knowing how much you've put into this team, knowing how hopefully amazing it will turn out to be, but yet there is this human element.

29:26This player did not expect to be traded. He's young. He has a family. He has a life. He set up a career where he thought that was, he's going to be there until the very end and within minutes his life shifts and you are the leader holding everyone everything accountable and yet you have to mitigate the personal aspect of the feelings you're gonna make me cry you say that it's very well said um you know in my experience welcoming a player to the Laker organization, I often hear, you know, this is my dream. I've always wanted to be a Laker, you know, to play in the same place where Magic did and Kobe and Shaq and Kareem.

30:16But Luka was not, didn't come into the Lakers like that. He was still, I could see his he was trying to figure out why is this happening like you know because it as soon as a trade happens the first thing we had a a private jet to bring him to LA to you know assimilate him and bring him in to the organization and um you know you could see that he left his heart in Dallas and it was going to take him time to process. And the beauty, and I, you know, I'd never met Luca. I mean, he was someone special to me because the last night that I saw Kobe alive was about a month before he passed. He brought his daughter Gigi to come see Luka play because Luka was Gigi's favorite player.

31:18So I always had a soft spot in my heart for Luka because of that and never in a million years thought he would become available that he could become a Laker. And so the beauty of Luka and getting to know him was that he is a real person and he feels his emotions and he doesn't try to hide them. And so in real time, you know, February, March, until he had to go back to Dallas in April to play that, where he cried on the bench, he brought all Laker fans together because we were feeling what he was feeling. He was sharing his emotions with us. And that endears him to our fans, and they want to see him succeed.

32:15So, you know, he's just been terrific to work with, and I think he's come back with a purpose of wanting to win a championship for this team. He's also living by the beach. He's got a beautiful house. Six million dollar Bugatti, apparently. I think he's gotten over it. I think we can safely say he's gotten over it. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's OK to feel, you know, it's kind of like, you know, if if your boyfriend breaks up with you, it's OK to, you know, go out and get a new dress and and, you know, try to make him regret that he ever did that. So if that's the case, then, you know, we'll take it.

33:06We'll take it. Keep feeding that. So another major thing that happened in 2025, it was the decision to sell a majority of the Lakers, 85 % of the Lakers for$10 billion. Why now? My dad did really a wonderful thing by putting the Laker team in a trust. A lot of times when an asset the size of, you know, the value of something like the Lakers is passed to a generation, normally you have to sell that asset to pay. Very heavy tax. There's a lot of taxes. But what he did was he transferred ownership over time to a trust that he set up for his children. And he wanted us to keep the team for as long as we could.

34:08But when you have six children, all different ages and in different places in their lives, it comes time for them to do their estate planning. And it was actually held in what's called the Last Man Standing Trust, which are illegal in most countries because they cause murder. It was very complicated, and it's hard to explain it all. But, you know, the time was right. The buyer was the right one. Our fans know after watching the success that the L.A. Dodgers have had that, you know, Mark Walter will continue to, you know, want to win. And I'm staying on to help the transition. And, you know, he honors the Buss family legacy that's important to him.