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Buying a sports franchise takes time. There are certainly several hoops that an interested party has to jump through, and it likely involves hours of legal writing and contracts.
The sale of the Timberwolves NBA franchise began in 2021. A group headlined by former MLB player Alex Rodriguez and entrepreneur Marc Lore indicated that they were interested in purchasing the Minnesota NBA team. Former owner Glen Taylor reached a deal with the group in April 2021, with the intention that the group would become the majority owners over two years.
Initially, Lore and Rodriguez bought 20% of the team in 2022 and acquired an additional 20% in 2024; however, the deal subsequently stalled. There hadn't been any movement until June 24 of 2025, when, finally, after long last, the purchase was officially approved by the NBA Board of Governors.
The NBA Board of Governors has unanimously approved the sale of the controlling interests in the Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx from Glen Taylor to Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez. pic.twitter.com/dM5Se1l6ye
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) June 24, 2025📲 Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp
Here's more on Lore, who is one of the new co-owners of the Timberwolves.
Who bought the Timberwolves?
The sale that went through wasn't just for the Timberwolves. Rodriguez and Lore are now also the proud owners of the Iowa Timberwolves, Minnesota's G-League affiliate, as well as the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx.
Rodriguez is well-known for his baseball career spanning 22 seasons. Lore, is much more of an unknown to the casual sports fan.
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Who is Marc Lore?
Lore has been a long-time entrepreneur. His background is in investment banking. He developed a widely used certification program for financial risk managers. Lore co-founded The Pit in 1999, which was seen as an alternative to eBay. It was sold for $5.7 million in 2001 to Topps.
He was then the co-founder of 1800DIAPERS, which was later re-branded as Diapers.com. He sold that venture to Amazon for $545 million in 2011. Lore was back at it again in 2014, co-creating Jet.com, an e-commerce company. It was bought by Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016.
Walmart then hired Lore to be its CEO and president from 2016-20. After stepping down he has gotten back into investing, including projects with Archer Aviation, a new venture capital firm with Rodriguez, an online brokerage firm Tornado, and a food delivery service Wonder, which bought GrubHub and Blue Apron in the past few years.
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Marc Lore's net worth
Forbes.com has Lore's net worth as of June 19, 2025 as $2.9 billion.
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