Suns minority owners target Ishbia's majority stake in filing - ESPN

A less-redacted court filing in a lawsuit against Mat Ishbia includes new financial details that two Phoenix Suns minority owners say could threaten Ishbia's majority ownership of the team.

The filing, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN on Tuesday, is from a lawsuit filed Nov. 24 in Delaware State Court by attorneys representing Scott Seldin and Andy Kohlberg, two Suns minority owners. Ishbia's spokesman said the filing contains «nothing new» and that its claims are «ridiculous.»

The lawsuit against Ishbia accuses him of financial misconduct, including using the team as a «personal piggy bank.» Ishbia, who bought the Suns in 2023, has denied such allegations.

The battles between the Suns minority owners and Ishbia can be traced back to September 2024, when Kohlberg began negotiating a buyout with an adviser to Ishbia. Seldin, meanwhile, didn't seek a buyout. Kohlberg's talks continued into 2025, and he asked for a response from Ishbia on June 1.

The next day, Ishbia held a $250 million capital call raise — in which investors are asked to make actual payments on their financial commitments — and «threatened the minority owners with a punitive dilution of their ownership interests» if they failed to fund it by June 12, according to the new filing. As part of the raise, new units of ownership would be issued at $10 million per unit — a figure that Seldin and Kohlberg say was far from the valuation three months prior, when Ishbia bought units of the Suns from minority owners at $198 million per unit.

Under protest, the two minority owners say, they paid their portion of the capital call raise.

According the filing, Ishbia said the capital call raise wasn't fully funded and set up another capital call raise on July 8, with