Buyout Playbook

Playbook 1 of 5

The Buyout Landscape

In 2025 more than $200 billion changed hands across sport, media and entertainment. The largest leveraged buyout in history was done in this sector, and so was the largest media take-private ever. The opening playbook maps who did it, why, and what the deal logic says about where the next wave of control acquisitions is forming. It sets out four structural forces behind the record year. Public markets were systematically undervaluing complex sports and entertainment platforms, which is why Silver Lake paid a 55 percent premium to take Endeavor private at a $25 billion enterprise value once the sum of the parts, WME, UFC, WWE, IMG and On Location, was valued correctly. Roughly $2.5 trillion of undeployed private equity dry powder needed a home at scale. And league and ownership conditions finally allowed control capital in. It then lays out the 2025 transaction map, every major buyout, take-private and franchise acquisition organised by deal type and thesis, anchored on the $55 billion EA Sports buyout by PIF and Silver Lake and the $10 billion Lakers valuation. The chapter closes with the Endeavor deep dive: Silver Lake's decade long value creation playbook from first investment to take-private.