Mark Walter is looking to sell another piece of his sports portfolio.
For now, however, there remain no indications that the Dodgers could be next.
Days after Walter’s stunning sale of the Lakers last week, the longtime Dodgers owner was back in the news Monday, when the Financial Times reported that he and business partner Todd Boehly (another Dodgers co-owner) were looking to sell their stakes in Chelsea Football Club of the English Premier League.
Just like last week, when Walter flipped the Lakers amid a federal probe into insurance companies he owns, Monday’s development raised renewed questions about his ownership status of the Dodgers.
However, the expectation within the organization is that Walter is still not planning to sell the MLB franchise, a source with knowledge of the situation told the California Post on Monday.
For now, there’s been no apparent change from the status quo of last week, when Dodgers president Stan Kasten insisted the club’s ownership situation was unaffected by the Lakers sale.
“This is a Lakers story,” Kasten told reporters then. “It’s not really a Dodgers story.”
The exact same can’t be said now, of course, with Boehly and Walter looking to offload ownership stakes in Chelsea that they had held since 2022.
But in this case, at least, the Chelsea sale isn’t coming completely out of the blue, thanks to years of reported strife that Boehly and Walter had with the soccer club’s other chief investors at private equity firm Clearlake Capital (which, notably, counts newly-minted San Diego Padres owner Jose E. Feliciano as one of its co-founders).
According to reports, Boehly and Walter are now considering selling their minority shares of Chelsea to the Clearlake group.
Still, amid the vacuum of information that remains regarding the status of Walter’s business empire and the ongoing investigation into his various companies, speculation about his ownership of the Dodgers will ensue.
Last week, Kasten declared he had “no reason to think” the resources provided to the team by Walter and his Guggenheim ownership group would change –– yet also professed not to have intimate knowledge of Walter’s non-sports businesses nor the investigation into them.
There have also been reports linking Dodger-affiliated companies (including one called “Dodgers Tickets LLC”) to the larger inquiry from federal prosecutors into Walter’s business practices.
It is all contributing to a cloud that continues to hang over the franchise, amid it’s attempt to win a third-consecutive World Series this year.
And while, to this point, there have been no signs of change within the organization, uncertainty still very much abounds in the wake of yet more news surrounding the owner.