What Does The Buss Family Own? How Did The Buss Family Get Rich?

The Buss family has owned the Lakers since 1979, when the late Jerry Buss purchased the team. Daughter Jeanie is now the controlling owner and team president.

Saving money from his first job out of USC, in 1959, Jeff Buss recruited four other investors to purchase a 14-unit rental apartment in West Los Angeles for a $6,000 down payment and $100,000 loan from the bank.

Eighteen years later, Buss turned this $6,000 down payment into a $350 million real estate empire.

Buss had a vision from the start: make the idea of going to a basketball game an all-out entertainment spectacle.

And so, the concept of “sports entertainment” was born.

At his newly-owned Great Western Forum, Buss added entertainment aspects that had never been thought of by any owner in any other sport.

He added cheerleaders (the now world famous Laker girls), added music and fanfare during breaks in the action, introduced a house band to play live music (which, to this day, still lives on and performs at STAPLES Center during player warm-ups) and delivered a complete entertainment experience to anyone with a ticket to the game.