As they have for the past seventeen years running, the New York Yankees have once again weighed in as the most valuable team in Major League Baseball. According to Forbes Magazine, they are now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 Billion!
Half a billion bucks later comes the Los Angeles Dodgers at around $2 Billion. Then drop off another round half billion and find the Boston Red Sox at $1.5 Billion. The poor Tampa Bay Rays are still down at the bottom of the barrel with a team valued at a mere $485 Million.
In the USA, the only other sports organization valued at over $2 Billion are the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL at $2.3 Billion.
The Yankees are the most valuable team in professional baseball because they have the highest revenues in the MLB. They pull in an annual average of $400 Million from the sale of the team’s controlling action in the YES Network. Additionally the team took in over one hundred million bucks in cable revenue last year, the highest totals in baseball.
Why does this keep happening every year? The New York Yankees are one of the most popular teams in professional sports, any sports. They consistently draw capacity crowds whether they are playing at home in Yankee Stadium or out on the road.
However, the Bronx Bombers, as the Yankees are affectionately known, only managed to come in fourth in the American League East last season and missed postseason playoffs for the first time in almost 20 years. Ticket sales were down and the Yankees total revenue dropped almost $10 Million from their 2012 numbers.
The Yankees once again led the league in total revenues with $461 Million but had to pay out a whopping $95 Million to the league’s 34% local revenue sharing pool on top of a $64 Million payment on a Pilot Bond for Yankee Stadium.
Now the pressure is on for the Yanks to perform in 2014. With team revenues at an all time high, Yankee fans are expecting nothing less than a playoff bound team out of their team this season.
When baseball commissioner Bud Selig took over MLB back in 1992 he told the team owners that he wanted to be judged by how much their franchise values increased during his tenure. The value of the average Major League Baseball team has increased by a factor of seven under Selig.
