The Phoenix Suns appear to have a buyer.

Billionaire Mat Ishbia is reportedly finalizing a deal to buy the NBA team. At 42, he’ll be the league’s second-youngest owner.

• The United Wholesale Mortgage CEO will pay around $4 billion, easily beating the record for an NBA team set by Joseph Tsai’s 2019 purchase of the Brooklyn Nets for $2.3 billion.
• The WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury are also included in the deal. 
• Ishbia’s brother Justin, a founding partner of Shore Capital, will be joining as an investor and alternate governor of the team.

The deal has been agreed to in principle and is expected to be completed soon.

The team is being sold by Robert Sarver after an investigation detailed repeated acts of misogyny and racism by the owner. An additional report found that Suns CEO Jason Rowley was also complicit in the team’s toxic culture but has faced few consequences to date.

Ishbia, a college walk-on, won an NCAA championship as a basketball player at Michigan State.

More Sales Coming

There are at least eight additional major teams for sale. 

MLB’s Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Angels, the Premier League’s Liverpool FC and Manchester United, and the NHL’s Ottawa Senators are all on the market. 

Like the Phoenix teams, the NFL’s Washington Commanders and NWSL’s Portland Thorns and Chicago Red Stars are at least exploring sales due to similar scandals related to their owners. 

Dan and Tanya Snyder could sell all, some, or possibly none of the Commanders, with first-round bidding reportedly closing this week.

Disney’s executive switch-up could indicate a future ESPN spinoff.

The company announced last month that Bob Iger, who was Disney CEO from 2005 to 2020, will replace his hand-picked successor, Bob Chapek.

Iger resisted an ESPN spinoff in the last years of his prior run as Disney CEO, but Wells Fargo analyst Steve Cahall said he could see a spinoff happening soon.

“We think Bob Iger is returning to [Disney] ready to make big changes,” he said, adding that a spinoff would make the Mouse “an attractive pureplay IP company.”

• ESPN isn’t considered an intellectual property, but Cahall said Disney has become a “franchise IP leader with global scale” through other acquisitions.
• “With linear and sports trends diverging from core IP, we think severing the company is increasingly logical,” he said.

“Investors can build their own portfolios, and we think ESPN inside of [Disney] is a portfolio with less and less logical connection as time goes by,” Cahall said. “As such, to us it’s a reasonably probable event for late 2023.”

In the fiscal year ending Oct. 1, 2022, ESPN lost 2 million subscribers.

ESPN Opinions

Activist investor Dan Loeb previously pushed for a spinoff but backed off after he gained “a better understanding of ESPN’s potential as a standalone business.”

In September, Disney CFO Christine McCarthy said Disney sees “ESPN as being part of our overall portfolio.”

“We’re very much against spinning off ESPN … that’s the dumbest thing ever,” Jason Bazinet, managing director at Citi, said last month.

Saudi Arabia has made a huge offer to Cristiano Ronaldo — but he’ll have to do more than just play soccer.

The country wants one of the world’s most popular athletes to boost its pitch for the 2030 World Cup.

• Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr offered Ronaldo a reported three-year contract worth an annual $212.9 million after he and Manchester United mutually agreed to part ways. 
• The star is currently in Dubai with plans to travel to Saudi Arabia to sign the deal, according to Spanish publication Marca.
• The deal includes a provision that Ronaldo would play an ambassador role for Saudi Arabia in its World Cup bid.

Well, This is Awkward

Should Ronaldo accept the offer, it would put him in the awkward position of working to thwart his home country: Portugal is teaming up with Spain and Ukraine on a 2030 World Cup bid.

Argentinian legend Lionel Messi has supported his country’s joint 2030 bid with Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile, but also promotes tourism to Saudi Arabia in a deal believed to be worth around $30 million per year.

The two soccer stars are the respective highest- and third-highest-paid athletes in the world this year, per Forbes, with Messi pocketing$130 million and Ronaldo $115 million. Both earn an estimated $55 million above their playing contracts.