Black billionaire Magic Johnson's LAFC sells Grasshopper stake as Euro bet fails

Los Angeles FC, the Major League Soccer club whose ownership group includes basketball legend and billionaire entrepreneur Magic Johnson, has sold its minority stake in Grasshopper Club Zurich, one of Switzerland's most historically significant football clubs, after the venture delivered disappointing results on and off the pitch.

The sale was confirmed by ESPN on June 30, 2026. LAFC had acquired the stake in Grasshopper in 2021, part of a wave of American sports investors expanding into European football markets as multi-club ownership models became fashionable among MLS franchises looking to develop player pipelines and expand their global brand presence. Grasshopper, founded in 1886 and the most decorated club in Swiss football history with 27 national championships, seemed a logical platform for an American club seeking a Swiss foothold in a country that FIFA calls home.

The partnership did not play out as planned. Grasshopper was relegated from the Swiss Super League and has spent time in the second tier since LAFC acquired its stake, undermining the commercial case for continued American involvement. The club plays at Zurich's FIFA headquarters city and carries significant Swiss football history, but its recent on-pitch struggles have made it a less attractive asset for an MLS franchise primarily focused on building its own brand in Los Angeles and the broader North American market.

LAFC was founded in 2014 and has built one of the strongest brands in Major League Soccer since beginning play in 2018. Its ownership group is star-studded by the standards of any professional sports franchise, including Johnson, actor Will Ferrell, basketball executive Pete Guber, Rupert Murdoch's son James Murdoch and television producer and former US soccer executive Dan Hunt alongside a range of private equity and institutional investors. The club won the MLS Cup in 2022 and has established itself as one of the league's two or three most valuable franchises.

Johnson, 66, accumulated his business fortune primarily through Magic Johnson Enterprises, his Los Angeles-based investment company that owns or has owned movie theatres, fast food franchises, fitness clubs, a coffee partnership with Starbucks and equity stakes in sports franchises including the Los Angeles Dodgers. His personal net worth is estimated at approximately $1.2 billion by Forbes. The LAFC stake is among his most visible current sports investments and has delivered commercial returns through the franchise's on-pitch success in MLS even as the Grasshopper co-ownership delivered neither sporting nor financial results that justified continued participation.

The exit from Grasshopper does not affect LAFC's core business or Johnson's primary investment thesis, which is built around domestic American sports and entertainment properties rather than European football. It does, however, mark the end of one of the shorter celebrity-backed European football investment experiments of the 2020s, in a decade when American money flowed into English, Italian, Spanish and Swiss clubs with varying degrees of commercial discipline and sporting success.