The sports empires of 2023

Team owners have grown their empire by buying more teams, earning more from broadcast rights, partnering with more endorsement assets and developing niche sports, analytics, betting and technology real estate.

The annual ranking of Forbes orders the 25 most valuable sports empires in the world with a total value of 173,000 million, 23% more than a year ago. This 2023, they include a new 10% premium to the added value of a sports empire to account for the scalability that comes with owning multiple sports properties.

Liberty Media leads the ranking with a value of 21,000 million. Liberty’s main sports assets are the F1 racing circuit (enterprise value: $17.1 billion) and the Atlanta Braves MLB team ($2.1 billion). Formula One had a banner in 2022, averaging 1.21 million viewers, the highest ever for the series, and signed a new television deal in June worth at least $75 million a year, 15 times his contract. former. No wonder Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund considered acquiring F1 for $20 billion last year, according to Bloomberg.

North American leagues like the NBA, MLB, and NHL may have limits on how much institutional investors can own, and the NFL forbids them entirely. But it is possible to use a big European brand to get back to having an important squad. Prime example: RedBird Capital, a new entrant into the top 25 by dint of buying a majority stake in Italian soccer team AC Milan in June for $1.028 million. The year before, RedBird bought an 11% stake in the Fenway Sports Group, whose holdings include MLB’s Boston Red Sox, English soccer team Liverpool and the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. RedBird is ranked 25th on our list, with a value of $3.6 billion. Fenway’s value is $10.4 billion, good enough for fourth.

To qualify as a sports empire, a person or company must own a majority stake in at least one sports team and their aggregate investments in other sports-related properties must total at least $100 million.

deportes@eleconomista.mx