Some things never change. The Los Angeles Lakers, for example, are always going to be successful financially — even if the team isn’t successful throughout the season.
In a leaked financial report from the 2016-17 season, Brian Windhorst revealed that the Lakers made a whopping $115 million.
I haven’t really revealed a lot of this because I was trying to be responsible with this information. Um, but this was for this 2016-17 season, so we’re a little bit were outdated here, but I want to kind of give you an idea of what the NBA financials are. The lead was not happy that I got this, and, uh, I’m sure they’ve taken measures. I haven’t tried to get a sense. I’m sure they’ve taken measures to prevent it from happening again. But I basically got the balance sheets of all the teams, and I was able to tell who was doing what. And, um, it was a kind of a fascinating look.
The best takeaway was the have and have nots, so let me just give you an example. This was his 2016 17 season. Their net income, you know, does include the taxes that they would have to pay to the government or whatever their net income. And that was the year they did not make the playoffs was $163 million. They had to give 49 million of that to their partners in revenue sharing, And they took home $115.4 million profit for that year. At the other end of the spectrum, the Detroit Pistons lost 63 million that year.
The fact that teams can be so far apart from each other financially is insane. A team like the Lakers being at the top is no surprise — they’re a top tier franchise in a high market city with a lot of history.
Meanwhile, the Pistons losing $63 million is bananas — but it kind of makes sense. The franchise is one of the lowest markets in the league and the team was 10th in the East that season
With the China controversy and the COVID-19 outbreak, who knows what the numbers look like this season. No doubt, teams are suffering some major financial losses.
