Cnn
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Los Angeles Lakers may not have as many NBA titles as Boston Celtics, but Lakers have exceeded their archrival with a $ 10 billion franchise price this week – only three months after the Celtics held the honor of the highest sale price For a professional sports team at $ 6 billion.
But this save might not last very long. The NFL New York Giants are buying a 10%stake, which could put the overall value of the team more than $ 10 billion, according to Marc Ganis, a sports consultant based in Chicago who advises the NFL, NBA and MLB clubs.
What is clear is that sports team assessments continue to climb – and climb quickly.
Victor Matheson, a The professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross who specializes in sports affairs, said in his 30 years of sports sales, he does not remember a team that has sold less than what it was bought. For example, a 10% stake in Milwaukee Bucks was sold in September 2024, which estimated the NBA team at a small market at $ 4 billion, a team sales a decade earlier for $ 550 million.
So, even if the 10 billion dollars record for Lakers is longer, other teams will end up with be sold to a heavy bonus at their previous purchase price.
The impact on fans can be complicated. Fans often publicly aspire to an owner who is ready to spend what it takes to make the team competitive, but some of the richest owners have ugly records. In the end, fans are more likely to worry about the percentage of victory of a team than the net value of its owner.
Sports franchises have long been considered like luxury properties in Russian.
“The only thing I remember all these economy courses is that the supply is fixed and that demand increases, prices are increasing. It is as simple as that,” said Sal Galatioto, one of the main sports investment bankers, sales of service teams. “It is so rare that you have the possibility of buying control of a leading deductible.”
Sports franchises have grown up in value in the last decade. The cord cut, streaming and DVRs have made more difficult for advertisers to touch viewers, which means that live sports has become more important.
The main sporting events were reliably among the most watched events on television.
“Sports content is the vital element of the media industry and which stimulates an enormous value for these franchises,” said Lori Bistis, partner of the agreements and one of the leaders of the sports and advice firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Although the cord cut has resulted in regional sports networks that come across the difficult time of duration in recent years, streaming services Have shown Growing interest in broadcasting games.
Bistis said it was logical to see the sports franchise values increase in tandem with that of lucrative television rights agreements.
“We are not surprised to see the increase in evaluation and all the data indicate that this continues,” she said.
Another factor: buyers of professional sports teams know that they will have access to precious data on the demography and behavior of expenditure of their fans. Bistis said data can be monetized Thanks to different vision experiences, goods and events.
Galatioto has declared the increase in sports games since it has become Legal in 2018 is also Arouse interest in sports and sports programs.
Investors in a deep pocket have lined up to buy minority participations even in teams and this also helps to increase evaluations.
“There is a lot of newly in the business,” said Galatioto. “I can always find the individuals with high net value who are ready to pay more. An individual obtains a gratification value of the ego, obtains advantages, he obtains other advantages. ”
A potential buyer might think, “I am ready to pay a premium to owner my favorite team. I am not ready to pay a premium to owner a lot of assets,” said Galatioto.
And a larger offer of potential buyers interested in minority participations in the teams can help increase the prices even more, said sports consultant Ganis.
“The universe of potential buyers of a 5% or 10% participation is much larger than the universe of potential buyers who can buy a 100% participation,” he said.
The billionaire businessman Mark Walter, who is now buying a controlling participation in the Lakers with this agreement, had been one of these minority owners With an important participation in a team, Ganis noted.
Walter had a participation of almost 27%, so its purchase of about a quarter of the team is everything it needed to cross the threshold of 50%. He did not have to set up $ 10 billion in its offer for Lakers – just a fraction of this amount, according to Ganis.
WALTER, CEO of the World Investment Company and Council Guggenheim Partners, also directs Guggenheim Baseball Management, which has a majority participation in the title champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
Guggenheim Baseball Management has invested massively in the success of Dodgers. The Dodgers, which have the highest payroll of the team ($ 338 million) in baseball, are followed by the New York dishes, at 325 million dollars, according to the SPOTRAC salary tracker. Dishes, which were bought by Wall Street Financial Steve Cohen in 2020 And had the highest payroll in 2024, he fell to the Dodgers in the playoffs last year.
But spending big on players, coaches and a front office does not necessarily lead to winning titles.
Only twice in the past 15 years, the baseball team with the best salary has won the World Series: The Boston Red Sox in 2018 and the Dodgers in 2020. (Major League Baseball is the only American sports league without salary ceiling.)
There were champions during this period, such as the Kansas City Royals, whose wage bill in 2015 was just a fraction of the best wages in the league.
The deep pockets of the new class of owners have less influence on the success of a team in the leagues with salary ceilings, such as the National Football League and the National Hockey League.
Thus, while baseball fans can be frustrated when their owners are not willing to spend to improve the alignment of the team, having the property of more modest means does not necessarily prevent a team from going out.
Matheson said that he had studied the relationship between victory and baseball pay and found that higher wages help the teams to win, at least during the regular season, but that wages are only responsible for predicting around 30% of the success of a team. The other 70% is due to factors such as good management, to avoid injury and even luck.
“If you are a fan, you have always wanted an owner who spends more money, but just because you have an owner who spends more money, that doesn’t mean you earn everything,” he said.