Phoenix Suns owners enter mediation to resolve financial dispute

The lawsuit between Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia and two Suns’ minority owners is expected to head to a confidential binding mediation, which could lead to Ishbia buying out the minority owners’ 13% stake at a price determined by a mediator, according to a new court filing obtained by ESPN.

The proposal was filed Monday in Delaware state court, and, if approved by the judge overseeing the case, will ultimately lead to the lawsuit being jointly dismissed.

Previously, the lawsuit, which was filed by attorneys representing Scott Seldin and Andy Kohlberg in November 2025, escalated to the point where it threatened Ishbia’s majority stake in the franchise, with control potentially shifting to Seldin and Kohlberg.

Now, Ishbia is in position to buy them out, which would remove the final two members of the ownership group who were holdovers from the previous Suns regime under Robert Sarver. After buying their shares, Ishbia stands to increase his majority ownership stake to about 96%.

A representative for Ishbia declined to comment. A source familiar with the matter said that Ishbia was in extensive conversations with Seldin and Kohlberg about buying out their shares prior to the litigation and that it was always his goal to buy out the limited partners.

Seldin and Kohlberg are represented by Michael Carlinsky of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Carlinsky declined to comment on the latest development that follows a series of lawsuits and legal maneuvers, the last of which led him to say that Ishbia’s stake in the Suns was in jeopardy of being diluted from 83.2% to 32.7%.

Ishbia bought the Suns in 2023 from Sarver following an NBA investigation into Sarver’s conduct and the team’s workplace culture.

At the time of Sarver’s sale, 14 of the 16 partners in the Suns’ ownership group accepted Ishbia’s buyout offer at a $4 billion valuation. Seldin and Kohlberg didn’t sell, however.

A year later, in September 2024, Kohlberg began negotiating a buyout with an adviser to Ishbia. Seldin, meanwhile, didn’t seek a buyout. Kohlberg’s talks continued into 2025. His attorneys say Ishbia held a $250 million capital call raise — in which investors are asked to make payments on their financial commitments — on June 2, 2025, and “threatened the minority owners with a punitive dilution of their ownership interests” if they failed to fund it in 10 days.

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