Jaylen Brown Calls for Player Equity as NBA Team Values Soar

As NBA franchise values soar into the billions, Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown said players should be allowed to build equity alongside owners, arguing the league’s labor rules lag far behind the wealth created by the sport.

Brown, a forward for the Boston Celtics and vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, compared NBA players to executives at major corporations, saying employees at companies such as Apple or Nike often receive equity for years of service. Professional athletes, he argued, should be viewed similarly.

“The sweat equity that you put in, you get compensated for doing your job, but you don’t get compensated for the growth. In major corporations and companies, you do,” said Brown in an interview with Bloomberg News in Boston on Thursday.

“I think players should be able to invest alongside ownership groups,” said the four-time NBA All-Star, Finals MVP, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Brown has served in the leadership role with the NBPA, the union representing NBA players, since 2019. The union and team owners reached their most recent collective bargaining agreement in 2023, a deal that runs through the 2029–30 season. While the CBA allows players to hold limited stakes in publicly traded companies tied to NBA ownership interests, it largely bars direct investment in teams.

Since that deal was signed, several of the league’s marquee franchises have been sold at eye-popping valuations. 

The Celtics were acquired in a $6.1 billion deal last year by a consortium of investors led by Bill Chisholm, co-founder of California-based private equity firm STG Partners. At the time, it was the biggest NBA deal ever, but that record only lasted a few months. In October, billionaire Mark Walter bought the Los Angeles Lakers in a deal that values the franchise at $10 billion. 

The league’s finances have also been bolstered by new media rights deals. In 2024, the NBA signed lucrative new 11-year media deals with Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal and Amazon.com Inc. that will net the league a reported $76 billion.

Brown has been outspoken on issues of inequality and racism throughout his career. He’s also advocated for players to take more ownership of the way in which they’re portrayed and their ability to speak out on issues they care about. He’s been a guest lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. 

In 2024, Brown launched the BostonXChange, a nonprofit organization that seeks to support underserved entrepreneurs and small businesses with a goal of generating $5 billion in generational wealth for Boston’s communities of color. Brown said the idea took shape after he signed a five-year, $303.7 million extension with the Celtics — at the time the largest contract in NBA history — and he wanted to reinvest back into Boston.

The accelerator “gives the talented group of people that exist here that are minorities an opportunity to win in the city that they’re born and raised in,” Brown said.

The XChange is part of his plan to build a modern day version of Black Wall Street, a Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that was destroyed in a 1921 racial massacre. 

A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published in 2015 found the median net worth of US-born Black residents in the Boston area was a mere $8, compared to nearly $250,000 for white residents — findings that Brown has cited as motivating his efforts. 

The initial phase of Brown’s BostonXChange organization was an incubator and accelerator program that provided applicants with grants of up to $100,000 over three years. Participants include a sports-apparel maker, a children’s nutrition business and an artificial intelligence marketing application. 

On Thursday, Brown said he’s planning to launch a second round of applications for the incubator program, but the timing hasn’t been finalized.

He also expanded the initiative to California’s Bay Area, where he attended the University of California at Berkeley, through a partnership with former NBA player and Dallas Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd. The Oakland XChange similarly seeks to support entrepreneurs.

Brown has also raised his profile on the court this season, leading the Celtics to one of the Eastern Conference’s best records even with fellow All-Star Jayson Tatum sidelined so far this year with an Achilles injury. Last month, Brown tied Larry Bird’s team record with nine consecutive games with at least 30 points. 

With assistance from Randall Williams.

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.