Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, a part-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the richest men in California, has agreed to buy a Major League Volleyball expansion franchise in Los Angeles.
Soon-Shiong will be the majority owner of the team, set to begin play in 2027, he told Sportico in an interview. He is buying the franchise with Ben Priest, a former investor and governor of MLV’s Omaha Supernovas, considered by many to be the sport’s flagship franchise.
“From my perspective, this is really a feeling like when the Lakers started many, many decades ago,” Soon-Shiong said. “The opportunity in women’s sports is growing, and Los Angeles is obviously a very important market.”
Soon-Shiong and Priest are paying a fee in the $15-$20 million range, according to multiple people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. Both men declined to comment on the expansion fee; as did a rep for the league. Soon-Shiong will be majority owner; Priest, who will have to divest from the Supernovas, will be the expansion team’s governor and managing partner.
The Los Angeles expansion franchise, which is yet to announce a name or a home venue, will be the 11th team for the league, which merged with the Pro Volleyball Federation (PVF) last year at a $325 million valuation. MLV is one of a handful of upstart pro women’s volleyball circuits, alongside LOVB and Athletes Unlimited, competing for market share in one of the country’s fastest growing pro sports.
Both Soon-Shiong and Priest mentioned that MLV is being built in the mold of the NBA. The merger happened last year, but 2027 is viewed by many around the league as the true debut of the combined entity. This team will make its MLV debut about a year before the Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles in 2028.
“When we think about structuring MLV like the NBA, there’s a governance element to that,” Priest said. “It was very important to us, when we did the merger and became MLV, to build a league that is investable and will be interesting to owners with experience in top sports. And that’s what we’re bringing in.”
MLV had eight teams this past season, with three others set to join in the coming years. They are the NorCal team backed by NBA investors Theresia Gouw and Vivek Ranadivé, a D.C. franchise backed by D.C. United owner Jason Levien and a Minnesota franchise backed by Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold. Other league owners include the DeVos family, owners of the Orlando Magic who also own the Grand Rapids Rise MLV team. Soon-Shiong said he was introduced to Priest via some of the other NBA owners who are already in MLV.
Soon-Shiong is worth about $8.8 billion, according to Forbes, largely due to a number of different pharma and medical tech ventures. He bought his roughly 4.5% stake in the Lakers from Magic Johnson, and he’s reportedly shown interest in a handful of other sports properties over the past two decades, including both Los Angeles MLB franchises when they were formally on the market.
At Sportico’s recent Invest West event in San Francisco, two owners of the NorCal MLV franchise—Gouw and Ranadivé—broke down the growth of the sport and their investment thesis.
“It is the number one team sport played by girls and young women in the United States—almost 500,000,” Gouw said on stage. “There are more young girls and women in the state of Texas who play volleyball right now than there are boys who play football. Sit with that for a second, and I’m an NFL fan. So that’s why volleyball.”
Soon-Shiong’s portfolio includes the Los Angeles Times and production company NantStudios and he said both would be used to promote the team.
“From an LA Times perspective, we have this thing called the LA Times Media Group and NantStudios, so there’s a lot of infrastructure here that can bring awareness of these teams,” he said. “It’s really just fitting to the mission of what we do.”
