LeBron James's company, King James Funding LLC, quietly issued nearly $300 million in asset-backed bonds in 2018 and 2022, securitizing future income from his lifetime Nike endorsement deal rather than his NBA salary — bonds purchased by two Sammons Financial life insurers whose investments are managed by an arm of Mark Walter's Guggenheim Partners, the same executive who later became the Lakers' controlling owner. [1][2]
Bloomberg first reported the structure this week, and Complex's follow-up coverage traced the detail Bloomberg's own framing left underdeveloped: the purchasing insurers, North American Company for Life and Health Insurance and Midland National Life Insurance Company, are both owned by Sammons Financial Group, whose investments Guggenheim Partners manages. [1] James's original 2018 bonds carried a 4.8 percent interest rate and do not mature until 2049. After paying down part of the debt, King James Funding issued a second tranche around the time James signed a $97 million Lakers contract extension in 2022 — roughly $60 million more in bonds at a 5.75 percent rate and a 34-year term. By the end of 2025, approximately $245 million remained outstanding on the insurers' books. [1]
A spokesperson for James told Bloomberg the arrangement was unremarkable for someone at his level of wealth: "The transactions were a securitization done by Mr. James with his personal, non-NBA salary, assets and income, which is a very common financial structure for an individual with this level of earnings and assets." The spokesperson said both deals received independent third-party credit ratings, that the 2022 transaction was "fully approved by NBA," and stressed James has no affiliation with Guggenheim, Sammons or either insurer beyond their role as bond purchasers. [1]
The Guggenheim connection is where Complex's reporting diverges most sharply from how Bloomberg's own social media account framed the story. Bloomberg's X post described the arrangement in narrow financial terms: "James controls borrowed almost $300 million from a pair of Midwestern life insurers advised by an arm of Guggenheim." Complex's published piece, by contrast, built its entire headline and structure around Walter — noting that Walter began building his ownership stake in the Lakers in 2021, before acquiring majority control, and has since agreed to sell the team amid unrelated federal scrutiny of other parts of his business empire. Bloomberg's reporting explicitly found no indication the financing connects to that federal scrutiny. [1]
James's history of Guggenheim-adjacent financial relationships predates Walter's Lakers ownership by roughly a year. In 2020, Guggenheim was among the investors when James and business partner Maverick Carter raised $100 million for their media company, SpringHill — meaning the King James Funding bond structure was not James's first financial relationship touching the Guggenheim ecosystem, even if his representative maintains no direct affiliation exists with Walter personally. [1]
The disclosure lands at a pointed moment for James's relationship with the franchise that employed him for parts of two decades. Complex's reporting connects the financing story to earlier reported friction between James and Lakers governor Jeanie Buss, who was said to have privately considered trading James in 2022 and, according to those same reports, felt he was insufficiently appreciative when the Lakers drafted his son Bronny James in 2024. Buss has publicly rejected that characterization as "just not true and completely unfair to him." [1] James has since left the Lakers for Philadelphia, while Bronny remains on the Los Angeles roster — leaving the Walter-adjacent financing structure as one more thread connecting James to a Lakers ownership era he is no longer part of.
What neither Bloomberg's initial report nor its own X summary addresses directly is the sequencing question Complex's framing implies but does not fully resolve: whether James's financing relationship with Guggenheim-managed insurers predates, postdates, or ran concurrent with any early conversations about Walter's path toward Lakers ownership. Bloomberg's reporting states plainly that it found no evidence connecting the two, and James's representative denies any relationship with Walter beyond the insurers' participation in the bond purchases. The financing structure itself — an athlete converting future endorsement income into present-day capital through insurance-backed securitization — is, as James's spokesperson noted, a known instrument among ultra-wealthy individuals managing illiquid future earnings. What makes it newsworthy is less the mechanism than the coincidence of counterparties: the same corner of the insurance and asset-management world that financed LeBron James's early wealth-building also, years later, delivered him an owner.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos