Steelers Among Top 30 Most Valuable Sports Franchises
Forbes recently released their annual top 50 most valuable sports franchises in the world, and the Pittsburgh Steelers came in as the 28th-most valuable team, with an estimated worth of $5.3 billion. The Steelers, who have an operating income of $129 million, saw a 15% increase in profits in the last year.
Among NFL teams, the Steelers are the 17th-most valuable team. The Steelers are the most valuable team in the AFC North — ahead of the Cleveland Browns ($5.15 billion), Baltimore Ravens ($5 billion) and Cincinnati Bengals ($4.1 billion), who were last in the NFL. The Bengals, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions were the only NFL teams that didn’t crack the top 50.
The Dallas Cowboys one again were the most value team in professional sports at $10.1 billion. The Cowboys are the first sports team to cross the $10 billion threshold.
“All NFL franchises are riding high, however, with roughly $380 million in revenue per team coming from the league’s lucrative new national media rights package, which kicked in last season,” Forbes wrote. “The agreements—with CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, NBC and YouTube, plus Amazon’s Thursday Night Football deal, which started a year earlier—are set to pay at least $125.5 billion through 2033.”
All 32 NFL teams are now worth at least $4 billion, at an average of $5.7 billion, up 11% from 2023’s record $5.1 billion. And every team is profitable, with operating income of at least $56 million across the board for the 2023 season, according to Forbes estimates.
With massive new media deals and sports betting revenue skyrocketing, each team in the NFL took home more than $400 million in media and sponsorship revenue from the NFL in the 2022-2023 season, according Niccolo Conte of Visual Capitalist. The data was from Forbes and compiled by JP Morgan Asset Management.
In NFL terms, Steelers owner Art Rooney II is on the “low end” among NFL owners. Rooney was ranked the 30th-richest NFL owner in the league by the 33rd Team. Rooney is ahead of only Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown. The Green Bay Packers are ranked 32nd, but they’re the only team that doesn’t have a traditional “owner.” The Packers allow fans to purchase shares of the team through stock.
According to Brettt Knight and Justin Teitelbaum and the Forbes staff, the methodology behind the 50 most valuable teams rankings are culled from Forbes’ most recent Formula 1, MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and soccer team valuations.
“The team values are enterprise values (equity plus net debt) and include the economics of each team’s stadium but not the value of the stadium real estate itself. Similarly, the values include rights fees from regional sports networks owned by the team but not the value of the RSNs themselves; equity stakes in other sports-related assets and mixed-use real estate projects are also excluded,” the Forbes staff explained.
Read This Next
