The Dodgers return to the Major League Baseball World Series for what will be their 22nd appearance in the annual championship series and the 12th time they have competed for the title with the Yankees.
Four years after their last victory, Dave Roberts’ team is back in the hunt for another baseball title, a situation that would not have been possible without the investment of the owners, led by Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners.
Mark Walter Sports Investments
Walter has owned the Los Angeles club since 2012, when Guggenheim Partners, which includes former NBA player Magic Johnson and Chelsea owner Todd Buhle, bought half of the shares of the California team.
In this way, the team was acquired by Guggenheim Partners, consisting of: Mark Walter, Peter Guber, Irvin “Magic” Johnson, Stan Kasten, Todd Buhle, Bobby Button, and, most recently, tennis legend Billie Jean King, for $2.15 billion.
Walter is also the co-owner of English Premier League club Chelsea. In May 2022, BlueCo, a consortium led by US investor Todd Boehly and private equity firm Clearlake Capital, bought the club for $3 billion (Boehly, Walter and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss own a 38.5 percent equity stake). A year later, BlueCo acquired a controlling stake in French Ligue 1 club RC Strasbourg for $90 million.
As for his personal life, Walter is married to Kimbra, an attorney and philanthropist who is actively involved in several charitable causes, including TWF Causes which focuses on environmental conservation, social justice, and education. The couple resides in Chicago with their daughter, Samantha.
According to the prestigious Forbes magazine, Walter’s fortune currently amounts to about $6 billion, most of which is from the Guggenheim Partners group.
Guggenheim Partners is a financial services firm with assets of more than $325 billion, headquartered in Chicago and New York City, with 2,300 employees and 25 offices in six countries around the world.
Shohei Ohtani has the ability to opt out of his $700 million contract if neither executive is no longer with the Dodgers, according to multiple reports:
• Chairman of the Board Mark Walter
• President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman
-Front Office Sports (@FOS) December 14, 2023
Walter and Friedman, the two men behind Ohtani’s signing
Although all of the above are partners and co-owners of the Dodgers, Walter and Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, were the key men in Ohtani’s arrival to the Dodgers.
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Friedman joined the Dodgers in 2015, and under his leadership, Los Angeles has won a total of eight National League West pennants, as well as reaching the World Series three times, winning in 2020.
The Dodgers are looking for their eighth World Series title, and they will play Game 1 on Friday when they face the New York Yankees.
