What a record for the Lakers!

Just one year on, the Los Angeles Lakers have changed hands once again. Joshua Kushner, the brother-in-law of US President Donald Trump – who had attempted to invest in the new FIFA commercial venture conceived by Gianni Infantino before the project fell through – has acquired the NBA franchise for a record sum of 12.5 billion dollars (10.83 billion euros). Former Disney executive Bob Iger was also involved in the deal. In the summer of 2025, Mark Walter had acquired the Lakers from the Buss family for $10 billion, a figure which until now had been the highest ever paid for a sports club, a record now surpassed by the Kushner-Iger duo. Having mentioned the dual Lakers deal, rounding off the top three most lucrative sales in sporting history are the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, which changed hands in July for $9.6 billion. And it is precisely in recent years that a real shift in the trend has been recorded. In fact, the 10 most expensive acquisitions have all been finalised from 2022 onwards, with the Bucks and Mavericks – both NBA teams – bringing up the rear of the rankings at $3.5 billion each.

And what about football? There are no football clubs in the top 10. The most lucrative sale in the world of football was that of Chelsea, which was taken over in 2022 by Todd Boehly and the US fund Clearlake Capital for a total investment of 4.2 billion pounds, of which 2.5 billion was for the club’s shares alone. This sum equates to 3.37 billion dollars, just outside the top 10. As for Italian clubs, the most expensive acquisition was the one in 2022 that saw AC Milan pass from Elliott to the RedBird fund for 1.16 billion euros (1.34 billion dollars).