Lakers courtside seats are arguably the hottest and most coveted ticket in all of professional sports. Where else can you sit in between Jack Nicholson and Leonardo DiCaprio and high five Kobe Bryant live on national TV? Even for a regular season game against a mediocre team, people will pay thousands of dollars above the ticket price to sit "on the wood" at The Staples Center. In 1979, a regular season Lakers courtside seat cost just $15. Today that same ticket has a face value of $2500! And during a playoff game that same single ticket can go for as much as $20,000! The tickets are so hard to come by that even the late Lakers owner, Jerry Buss, DID NOT have seats on the floor, he was relegated to a luxury Box. There are several nearly insurmountable barriers to scoring courtside seats. First, a single courtside ticket costs $116,000 per season (including preseason). Second, despite the insane price tag, these seats have an extremely long wait list. Finally, every single seat is grandfathered in, meaning an existing owner has to either die or be willing to sell you his/her set for whatever you are willing to pay. So who owns the Lakers courtside seats and how did they become rich and powerful enough to acquire the hottest tickets in Hollywood? Click the image below to launch our gallery or scroll down for a full list…
Who Owns Lakers Courtside Seats?
***With a little bit of digging we were able to learn that Yori was born in April 1951 and attends most games with her live-in partner Kay Harrington. The couple co-owns two homes in Beverly Hills, one that was purchased in 1998 for $825,000 that is worth $4 million today and another purchased in 2009 for $3.1 million. The more recent house was purchased from Relativity Media boss Ryan Kavanaugh. That house is located on Beverly Ranch Road and has sweeping views of Sherman Oaks. Kay Harrington is supposedly a wealthy retired jewelry designer.***
- Jerry Weintraub – 4 Seats (Film producer, Oceans 11-13, Karate Kid)
- Jimmy Goldstein – 2 Seats (NBA superfan famous for leather outfits, real estate)
- Penny Marshall – 2 Seats (Director of movies like Big and A League of their Own)
- Jimmy Iovine – 4 Seats (Chairman Interscope Records, American Idol coach)
- Patrick Soon-Shiong – 4 Seats (Richest person in LA, made $7.2 billion selling drug companies)
- Avi Lerner – 2 Seats (Producer of 80s action films and The Expendables franchise)
- Jeffrey Katzenberg – 4 Seats (DreamWorks Chairman)
- Joel Silver – 2 Seats (Producer of Die Hard, The Matrix and Lethal Weapon trilogies)
- Steven Jackson – 8 Seats (Owner of footwear company ACI International, LA Gear, Perry Ellis etc)
- Luanne Wells – 2 Seats (Inherited from late husband Frank Wells, President of Disney)
- Denzel Washington – 2 Seats
- Chris Silbermann – 2 Seats (ICM Talent Agency)
- Joe Smith – 2 Seats (Music mogul, former head of Warner Brothers, Elektra and Capital Records)
- Irving Azoff – 4 Seats (CEO of Ticketmaster)
- Dyan Cannon – 2 Seats (Won seats in divorce from real estate mogul Stan Fimberg)
- Magic Johnson – 1 Seat (Sold 5% ownership stake and 4 seats to Patrick Soon-Shiong)
- Ari Emanuel – 4 Seats (Head of William Morris Endeavor talent agency)
- Norman Pattiz – 4 Seats (Founder of Westwood One radio empire)
