Most Valuable American Football Teams (2023 Update)
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Most valuable American football teams
Disregard the NFL’s 20% drop in revenue during the pandemic-impacted 2020 season, to an average of $381 million per team. Forget that operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) plummeted to an average of $7.1 million a team, from $109 million the previous season.
The fact is, money came raining down on the NFL over the past year, pushing the value of the average team up 14%, to $3.48 billion, the biggest gain in five years.
In March, the NFL signed $111.8 billion in media rights deals ($112.6 billion including the ESPN payment for extending Monday Night Football a year through 2022 and money received from broadcasters for additional regular-season and playoff games); that represented an 82% average annual increase over the current deals.
As a result, the national media rights payout to each of the league’s 32 teams is going to increase from $220 million this season to $377 million in 2032. And that’s not even counting the NFL Sunday Ticket deal with DirecTV, worth an average of $1.5 billion annually through 2022.
Then there’s the NFL’s venture capital arm, 32 Equity, which has also been scoring. Each NFL team kicked in $1 million to launch 32 Equity in 2013 and has since put in another $3 million or so. Profits from 32 Equity have been reinvested rather than distributed to the teams. But the portfolio has generated average annual returns in excess of 30% and is now worth well over $100 million per team, according to team executives who requested anonymity.
Among 32 Equity’s investments: Fanatics (sports merchandise), Skillz (mobile gaming), Genius Sports (sports data and technology), Clear (biometric identity verification), Hyperice (athlete recovery devices), Sportradar (sports data and technology), On Location (luxury event hospitality) and Mythical Games (gaming technology studio).
The NFL’s Growing Media Pie
The NFL’s new national media rights deals are worth $111.8 billion. Below is the payout (in millions) to each of the league’s 32 teams for each season through 2032. The league’s Sunday Ticket deal with DirecTV is not included.
One reason the NFL’s investments shine is that its brand and content allow the league to secure favorable investment deals, akin to what Amazon does with its vendors. For example, when Genius Sports became the official betting data source for the NFL in April, it agreed to issue up to 22.5 million warrants in addition to the cash it paid the league, entitling the NFL to purchase one ordinary share of Genius for $0.01 each. The warrants will be subject to vesting over the six-year term of the licensing agreement, with the first 11.25 million warrants to be vested immediately upon issuance.
The value of the league’s investments stands out in the Green Bay Packers’ financial statements. For the 2020 season, the team reported an operating loss (including depreciation) of $38.8 million but a net income of $60.7 million thanks to $120 million in mostly unrealized investment gains.
League insiders tell Forbes that the NFL is on the verge of starting something even bigger, sort of a 32 Equity writ large—the formation of a new company in which the league will own a majority stake but will be funded by outside investors that could include companies like SoftBank and sovereign wealth funds. Other partners could potentially include existing media partners or tech companies like Apple and Twitter.
The NFL’s contribution to this new company would be assets that could become much more valuable with help from partners with expertise in distribution and content creation. To kick things off, the league could potentially put in its NFL Films library, the NFL Network, and the league’s deals with DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars Entertainment.
“Lots of league assets could be leveraged up with outside money,” one team owner tells Forbes. The NFL Network, for example, generates between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in annual revenue, yet it is carried on the league’s books at zero.
Profitable Partners
The NFL’s new media deals all begin in 2023, except for its deal with Amazon, which begins in 2022.
All of this will further drive up team values, of course, further limiting the number of people who can afford to buy an NFL team. To make it easier for new investors to enter the owners’ club, the NFL recently and very quietly doubled the debt limit for buyers of teams to $1 billion, from $500 million.
The Dallas Cowboys, worth $6.5 billion, top our ranking for the 15th consecutive year. The Cowboys generate the most revenue ($800 million) and operating income ($280 million) in the league by a mile. Owner Jerry Jones is the league’s consummate salesman, and the team’s more than $200 million in combined sponsorship and advertising revenue is easily tops in the NFL.
But the biggest one-year increase in value belongs to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who are up 29% and whose brand has been reborn with last season’s Super Bowl run. The Bucs have seen a surge in season ticket and merchandise sales since the arrival of Tom Brady in March 2020 and pushed through significant ticket-price increases for the 2021 season.
Here is the ranking of the most expensive American football teams.
1. Dallas Cowboys
Value: $6.5 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Jerry Jones
Operating Income: $280.4 million
2. New England Patriots
Value: $5 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Robert Kraft
Operating Income: $142.4 million
3. New York Giants
Value: $4.85 billion
One-Year Change: 13%
Owners: John Mara, Steven Tisch
Operating Income: -$12.5 million
4. Los Angeles Rams
Value: $4.8 billion
One-Year Change: 20%
Owner: Stanley Kroenke
Operating Income: $37.2 million
5. Washington Football Team
Value: $4.2 billion
One-Year Change: 20%
Owner: Daniel Snyder
Operating Income: $25 million
6. San Francisco 49ers
Value: $4.175 billion
One-Year Change: 10%
Owners: Denise DeBartolo York, John York
Operating Income: -$45.4 million
7. Chicago Bears
Value: $4.075 billion
One-Year Change: 16%
Owner: McCaskey family
Operating Income: -$3.6 million
8. New York Jets
Value: $4.05 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Johnson family
Operating Income: $8.4 million
9. Philadelphia Eagles
Value: $3.8 billion
One-Year Change: 12%
Owner: Jeffrey Lurie
Operating Income: -$25.9 million
10. Denver Broncos
Value: $3.75 billion
One-Year Change: 17%
Owner: Pat Bowlen Trust
Operating Income: $8.2 million
11. Houston Texans
Value: $3.7 billion
One-Year Change: 12%
Owner: Janice McNair
Operating Income: -$20.2 million
12. Seattle Seahawks
Value: $3.5 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Paul G. Allen Trust
Operating Income: -$20.8 million
13. Green Bay Packers
Value: $3.475 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owners: Shareholders
Operating Income: -$33.5 million
14. Pittsburgh Steelers
Value: $3.43 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owners: Daniel Rooney Trust, Arthur Rooney II
Operating Income: $24.5 million
15. Miami Dolphins
Value: $3.42 billion
One-Year Change: 18%
Owner: Stephen Ross
Operating Income: $7.9 million
16. Las Vegas Raiders
Value: $3.415 billion
One-Year Change: 10%
Owner: Mark Davis
Operating Income: -$5.1 million
17. Baltimore Ravens
Value: $3.4 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Stephen Bisciotti
Operating Income: -$20.7 million
18. Minnesota Vikings
Value: $3.35 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Zygmunt Wilf
Operating Income: -$9.7 million
19. Indianapolis Colts
Value: $3.25 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: James Irsay
Operating Income: -$20 million
20. Atlanta Falcons
Value: $3.2 billion
One-Year Change: 11%
Owner: Arthur Blank
Operating Income: -$4 million
21. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Value: $2.94 billion
One-Year Change: 29%
Owner: Glazer family
Operating Income: $1.9 million
22. Kansas City Chiefs
Value: $2.93 billion
One-Year Change: 17%
Owner: Hunt family
Operating Income: $9 million
23. Los Angeles Chargers
Value: $2.92 billion
One-Year Change: 12%
Owner: Dean Spanos
Operating Income: -$48.7 million
24. Carolina Panthers
Value: $2.91 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: David Tepper
Operating Income: -$22 million
25. New Orleans Saints
Value: $2.825 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Gayle Benson
Operating Income: -$15.7 million
26. Jacksonville Jaguars
Value: $2.8 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Shahid Khan
Operating Income: $68.8 million
27. Arizona Cardinals
Value: $2.65 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Michael Bidwill
Operating Income: -$16.2 million
28. Tennessee Titans
Value: $2.625 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Amy Adams Strunk
Operating Income: -$12 million
29. Cleveland Browns
Value: $2.6 billion
One-Year Change: 11%
Owners: Dee and Jimmy Haslam
Operating Income: $5.7 million
30. Detroit Lions
Value: $2.4 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Ford family
Operating Income: -$22.2 million
31. Cincinnati Bengals
Value: $2.275 billion
One-Year Change: 14%
Owner: Michael Brown
Operating Income: -$16.6 million
32. Buffalo Bills
Value: $2.27 billion
One-Year Change: 11%
Owners: Terry and Kim Pegula
Operating Income: -$17.6 million
METHODOLOGY
Figures for revenue and operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) are for the 2020 season and net of stadium debt service. Debt includes both team and stadium debt recourse to team owners. We employ the cash basis, rather than the accrual basis, of accounting.
Team values are enterprise values (equity plus net debt) and include the economics (including non-NFL revenue that accrues to the team’s owner) of the team’s stadium but not the value of the stadium real estate itself. In 2020, the Rams and the Raiders paid their relocation fees to the league in full while the Chargers paid half.
We did not include the $47 million that each of the other 29 NFL teams received from these fee payments in our operating income figures because it was nonrecurring income.
