Major League Soccer team LAFC has been valued at $700m after some of its owners partially bought out a minority stake held by Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan.

According to Bloomberg, a group of owners acquired half of Tan’s 20-per-cent stake, with a plan to buy the other half in the future.

Tan is the owner of English Championship club Cardiff City and a major shareholder of Belgian club KV Kortrijk. He also recently reduced his controlling stake in Bosnian champions FK Sarajevo.

LAFC has multiple minority investors, including former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson, actor Will Ferrell, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, and life coach Tony Robbins.

In November 2019, Forbes valued LAFC at $480m, just behind Atlanta United at $500m.

MLS teams have risen exponentially in value in recent years.

Last year, former Hewlett Packard chief executive Meg Whitman, the billionaire chief executive of short-form mobile video platform Quibi, and her husband Dr. Griff Harsh secured an approximately 20-per-cent stake in FC Cincinnati, in a deal which valued the team at $500m.

Having paid a National Football League record $2.275bn for the Carolina Panthers in 2018, hedge fund billionaire David Tepper reportedly paid a league-record $325m for an MLS team in Charlotte last year. Prior to that, the most recent MLS expansion fees, for St. Louis and Sacramento, were $200m.