The Dallas Cowboys entered the NFL playoffs with Super Bowl dreams, but like many recent postseason trips, it ended in a nightmare for America’s Team, as the Cowboys were blown out by the Green Bay Packers despite being heavy favorites. It marked the 29th straight season without a conference game appearance.
The playoff stumbles haven’t slowed Dallas’ financial rise. The Cowboys are the most valuable sports team in the world at $9.2 billion, based on Sportico’s most recent franchise valuations over the past 11 months.
The top 100 teams cover six sports and 10 leagues around the world. They are collectively worth $405 billion, including team-related businesses and real estate held by owners. There are 22 clubs worth at least $5 billion, and the cutoff for the top 100 is $1.7 billion (Philadelphia Flyers).
Click here for a ranking of all 100 teams and a detailed methodology.
The Cowboys generated $1.05 billion in revenue during the 2022 season, becoming just the second sports franchise in the world to top $1 billion after FC Barcelona.
Dallas has been at the forefront of changes to the NFL’s financial engine with how clubs ran their businesses locally since Jerry Jones bought the club for $150 million in 1989. The club kicked off the sponsorship wave in the 1990s; took control of its merchandise business; launched hospitality business Legends; built AT&T Stadium; and opened its $1.5 billion practice facility and mixed-use development, The Star. Sponsorship revenue tops $200 million annually from partners such as AT&T, Bank of America, Ford Motor, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and SeatGeek. Luxury suite revenue exceeds $100 million.
And thanks to the NFL’s relatively hard salary cap without the loopholes on spending like the NBA, Dallas is a cash machine with an estimated profit of $460 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. For comparison, the most profitable Premier League club for the 2021-22 season was Manchester City at $59 million after player trading.
The NFL doesn’t have the global presence of the biggest soccer clubs, but its economic system helps all 32 teams rank among the top 53 most valuable franchises with the $4 billion Cincinnati Bengals football’s most “affordable” club. The NFL’s current media deals with ESPN, NBC, CBS, Fox, Amazon and YouTube are worth $125 billion cumulatively and more than $12 billion a year on average. Every club receives an equal share that will result in a check from central revenue of roughly $400 million last season, including league sponsorships and merchandise.
Boosting NFL values even further is the “scarcity” factor, as clubs rarely sell. The average ownership tenure is 40 years and only four teams have changed hands since 2012, with the Washington Commanders ($6.05 billion sale price) and Denver Broncos ($4.65 billion) the latest transactions.
The NBA is morphing more closely towards the NFL model with a bigger annual check from the league and buyers less market sensitive when looking at a purchase. The floor price for an NBA franchise has doubled over the past three years to $2.72 billion (New Orleans Pelicans), and every NBA team ranks among the top 80 franchises in the world.
The league’s global potential and upcoming new media deal have resulted in the average franchise worth 11 times revenue, a massive increase from a dozen years ago when teams typically traded for three times revenue.
The “get-in” price for the NBA is up significantly, but it remains top heavy with the league’s third most valuable team (Los Angeles Lakers) worth 43% more than the Boston Celtics in fourth. The Golden State Warriors ($8.28 billion), New York Knicks ($7.43 billion) and Lakers ($7.34 billion) slot in behind the Cowboys overall.
The Warriors’ total revenue is up seven-fold since Joe Lacob and Peter Guber led an ownership group that paid $450 million for the team in 2010. The Warriors have 37 sponsors that spend at least $1 million a year, and those partners benefit from the largest social media following among North American sports franchises. Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has the biggest deal, with its jersey patch renewal worth an estimated $45 million per season. The average Warriors sponsorship deal is roughly nine years, while suite leases typically run 10 years, which should provide a buffer if Golden State is no longer an annual title contender.
Golden State’s sky-high value benefits from its multi-use development around Chase Center, and the team has expanded its related businesses with a new entertainment division launched last year—Golden State Entertainment—and landing a WNBA expansion franchise in 2023 that will begin play in 2025.
The rest of the top 100 is made up of MLB (17 teams), soccer (11), NHL (7) and Formula 1 (3). The New York Yankees ($7.13 billion) rank fifth overall including their equity stakes in the YES Network and premium experiences company Legends.
Manchester United ($5.95 billion), which just sold a 25% stake to Jim Ratcliffe, heads the soccer group, which has teams from each of the five major European leagues—MLS’ most valuable team, LAFC ($1.15 billion) fell more than $500 million below the cutoff.
The Cowboys and Warriors are the only non-soccer clubs among the top eight teams by revenue. The soccer clubs have an unmatched global reach but their values lag on a revenue multiple basis compared to their American counterparts. Three factors are in play for this dynamic, including a lack of player cost controls that suppress profits, a less cooperative membership base, and the very remote possibility of a relegation to a lower division with a catastrophic season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs ($2.65 billion) head up the seven NHL teams, while Ferrari ($3.13 billion) leads the trio of F1 entries.
There are eight people that are the control owner for two franchises within the top 100, but only one person is in charge of three teams. Stan Kroenke has built a sports empire under the Kroenke Sports & Entertainment banner that encompasses a half-dozen teams, including three that are worth more than $3 billion in the Los Angeles Rams ($6.94 billion), Arsenal ($3.6 billion) and Denver Nuggets ($3.4 billion). The teams are winning on the field and court as well. The Rams (2022) and Nuggets (2023) both won titles during the past two years, while Arsenal is currently in second place in the Premier League, two points back of Liverpool.