Clippers star Kawhi Leonard allegedly had an undisclosed multi-million dollar sponsorship agreement with the company that designed the team’s videoboard inside the Intuit Dome, investigative reporter Pablo Torre reported on his podcast on Thursday.
It is Leonard’s second sponsorship deal that has come into question after Torre exposed his involvement with Aspiration, the now-bankrupt green banking company that is at the center of an ongoing NBA investigation into whether the deal circumvented NBA salary cap rules.
The Athletic previously reported that the NBA’s investigators had examined “a previously unreported endorsement deal with another company.”
On his podcast Thursday, Torre said he interviewed an “anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome” who alleged that the deal “was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to Kawhi.”
Daktronics is a South Dakota-based company that designed the Halo Board, as well as other high-definition scoreboards around the country. The double-sided halo display is a key feature of the Clippers’ $2 billion arena that opened in August 2024.
In addition, Torre said an unnamed former Clippers official confirmed the sponsorship deal.
ESPN reported that it is unclear when Leonard reportedly began his sponsorship deal with Daktronics, or what the alleged terms included, a spokesperson who represented Daktronics told Hunterbrook Media that Leonard doesn’t have an active contract with the company. Hunterbrook Media has collaborated with Torre.
The spokesperson also told Hunterbrook Media, “I don’t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that.”
The law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is leading the NBA’s investigation into whether Leonard’s April 2022 sponsorship deal with Aspiration circumvents the league’s salary cap rules.
The league opened its investigation into Leonard’s deal after Torre cited internal documents over a series of podcasts that showed Clippers owner Steve Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration in September 2021 and later signed a 23-year, $300 million deal with Aspiration that would make the company the first founding partner of the Intuit Dome.
Six months later, Leonard signed a $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration. According to Torre, an anonymous Aspiration employee said the sponsorship deal was intended to circumvent the salary cap. The Clippers have maintained they are innocent in the matter.
On June 30, the Clippers and Toronto Raptors agreed to a trade that would send Leonard to the Raptors in exchange for forward Brandon Ingram, swingman Gradey Dick, unprotected first-round draft picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 first-round pick swap and two second-round picks.
The trade was paused by both teams until the investigation into the Aspiration deal is complete as the Raptors’ ownership group must assume the risk of penalties related to Leonard’s contract that could theoretically be affected by the outcome.