Latest news with #sportsbusiness
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Bloomberg Business of Sports: New Look Intuit Dome
Join hosts Michael Barr, Damian Sassower and Vanessa Perdomo for a look at some of the latest headlines and stories in the business of sports. Bloomberg Business of Sports Reporter Randall Williams details the latest private equity investments into NFL franchises. Bloomberg Sports Reporter Vanessa Perdomo speaks with former FC Barcelona star Gerard Pique and Kings League CEO Djamel Agaoua on the rising popularity of the seven on seven soccer league, which was launched in 2022. Gillian Zucker, CEO of Halo Sports and Entertainment and President of Business Operations for the LA Clippers, joins to discuss the successful first season for the tech-heavy Intuit Dome.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Forbes 2025 Global Soccer Team Valuations — Ranked List
The coronation is beginning to feel routine: For the fourth year in a row, and the ninth time in the past 12 editions of Forbes' ranking, Spain's Real Madrid is the world's most valuable soccer team, worth $6.75 billion—a 2% increase over 2024. This time, however, the club has a new jewel in its crown. During the 2023-24 season, Los Blancos posted $1.13 billion in revenue, becoming the first soccer team to hit the ten-figure threshold in a single year. In fact, only one other team in any sport has crossed the $1 billion revenue barrier: the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, who first did so in 2021 and subsequently climbed to $1.2 billion in 2023, according to Forbes estimates. Manchester City of England's Premier League, with $901 million in revenue in 2023-24, is the closest any other soccer team has come. But it is the other team from Manchester—Manchester United—that is nearest to Real Madrid with its valuation, at $6.6 billion, maintaining its lead on another Spanish powerhouse, Barcelona, which sits third in the financial standings at $5.65 billion. Together, the 30 most valuable soccer teams are worth more than $72 billion, or an average of $2.4 billion, up 5% from 2024's record $2.26 billion. The list includes 12 teams from the Premier League, four from Italy's Serie A, three from Spain's La Liga, two from Germany's Bundesliga and one from France's Ligue 1. There are also eight teams from Major League Soccer, although none rank higher than No. 15 LAFC, at $1.25 billion. European clubs benefit from continental competitions that offer hefty payouts tied to how far teams advance. For instance, Real Madrid's money-making machine got a boost last year from the club's run to the UEFA Champions League title, which came with $154 million in prize money. The Europa League purse is not as lofty, but 2024 champion Atalanta still earned roughly $38 million—good news for Manchester United, which sank to 16th in the Premier League standings this season but managed to advance to the continental tournament final. The Red Devils also benefit, of course, from one of the strongest brands in all of sports and a massive global fan base, built over two decades of dominance in the 1990s and 2000s. Likewise, Real Madrid has international appeal—and lucrative commercial partnerships to match—and just as important, the club recently completed a renovation of its Santiago Bernabéu Stadium for a reported $1.9 billion, which should turbocharge its match-day revenue, including ticket sales. But while Real Madrid's revenue total is similar to the Cowboys', the club's valuation trails Dallas' $10.1 billion by more than $3 billion. The discrepancy is a function of the leagues' differing revenue multiples, reflecting the enthusiasm of sports investors and the prospects of future revenue growth. Forbes' most recent NFL valuations, published in September, carried an average multiple of 9 times revenue—and the NBA was even higher, at 11.7x. By contrast, the 22 European soccer clubs valued by Forbes are worth an average of $2.9 billion on revenue of $570 million, for a multiple of 5.1. Different teams, countries and leagues across Europe have their own specific challenges, including significant debt, restrictive ownership requirements, underwhelming rises (or even declines) in media rights fees, and bureaucratic red tape that makes stadium improvements difficult. In addition, across the entire continent, there is no salary cap to keep spending in check, teams must live in fear of relegation if they have a down season, and the sports culture generally tends to be resistant to the monetization of clubs, with fans frequently protesting ticket price increases. In December, for example, supporters of the Premier League's Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United and Manchester City joined forces in demonstrations against price hikes, and Liverpool and City later announced that they would freeze costs for next season. The multiples in MLS, where the average team is valued at 9.3 times revenue, suggest more optimism and explain why the LA Galaxy, at $1 billion, are worth $100 million more than Aston Villa of the Premier League despite recording less than a third as much revenue last season ($95 million vs. $343 million). Still, even if the growth is slower than in some North American leagues, European teams continue to appreciate. Leading the way year-over-year are the Premier League's Arsenal and Newcastle United, which saw their revenue spike and are up 31% and 38% from 2024's list of the most valuable teams, respectively, to $3.4 billion and $1.1 billion. All teams will hope to get a boost from the expanded Club World Cup, which kicks off next month in the United States, and 2026's FIFA World Cup, which is also set to be played on North American soil and should drive broad interest in soccer. Among individual clubs, Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain could be in line for a jump next year—whichever team wins Saturday's Champions League final will pocket an extra $28 million. Meanwhile, Barcelona is following in Real Madrid's footsteps with a renovation of its Camp Nou stadium that is expected to be completed by next summer. The upgrade could help it similarly threaten the $1 billion revenue barrier. On the field and off, El Clásico may be soccer's fiercest rivalry. The World's Most Valuable Soccer Teams Maria Gracia Jimenez/Soccrates/Getty Images Alex Dodd/CameraSport/Getty Images Stefan Matzke/sampics/Getty Images ImageAurelien Meunier/PSG/Getty Images Nicolò Campo/LightRocket/Getty ImagesCameron Smith/Danehouse/Getty Images Giuseppe Maffia/NurPhoto/Getty Images Forbes' team valuations are enterprise values (equity plus net debt) based on historical transactions and the future economics of each league and each team. For teams based in Europe, revenue and operating income (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) reflect the 2023-24 season and are rounded to the nearest $1 million. For U.S. clubs, figures reflect the 2024 regular season and are taken from Forbes' annual MLS team valuations, published in February. The team values include the economics of each team's stadium but not the value of the stadium real estate itself. Equity stakes in other sports-related assets and mixed-use real estate projects are also excluded. Forbes excludes player trading and disposals of player registrations from its operating income and revenue tabulations. Debt is measured in terms of interest-bearing borrowings due in more than one year (including stadium debt). Because enterprise value is a capital-structure-neutral metric, it allows Forbes to compare teams with different debt and equity structures. Where necessary, revenue and operating income numbers are converted to U.S. dollars based on the average exchange rate during the season (€1 = $1.08, £1 = $1.26, £1 = €1.16). The information used to compile Forbes' valuations came from teams' annual reports and documents, team executives, soccer team investors, credit rating agency reports and sports bankers, as well as the annual Deloitte Football Money League report and the soccer finance reporter known as Swiss Ramble.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
What can Caitlin Clark's injury absence tell us about her importance to the WNBA's business?
Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Want to get MoneyCall conveniently delivered to your email every Wednesday morning? Easy sign-up here.) Name-dropped today: Caitlin Clark, Greg Sankey, Newcastle, Hailey Salvian, Justin Connolly, Tom Brady, Anne Hathaway, Shohei Ohtani, Lamine Yamal, Karlie Kloss, Jack Ma, Angie Long, Hailey Salvian and more. Let's go: A window to quantify Caitlin Clark's impact If you were going to design an ideal experiment to measure the Caitlin Clark Effect — Clark's individual impact on things like TV audience and ticket sales — you would: Tonight, the Fever (now without Clark) play the Mystics in Baltimore, a game moved from Washington's usual home arena (capacity: 4,200) to CFG Bank Arena (capacity: ~12,000). The lowest get-in price has plummeted from the mid-$40s, per FOS/TickPick, to less than $20 this morning on StubHub. (Disclosure: StubHub is The Athletic's ticketing partner.) Advertisement The bigger question comes at the tail end of Clark's projected two-week injury break: Fever at Sky in Chicago on Saturday, June 7, a major event moved from the Sky's usual Wintrust Arena (capacity: 10,400) to the Bulls' United Center (capacity: 21,000). The game had been shifted to prime time on CBS, with the very real potential to be the most-watched WNBA game ever. Now? If Clark doesn't play, that delta between 'most-watched ever' and the actual number will be a pretty clear indicator of the premium delivered by Clark. The rating for tonight's diminished game in Baltimore will provide the first data point in that set (NBATV, 7:30 p.m. ET — or try streaming for free on Fubo). (For the CBS game in Chicago on June 7, it wouldn't surprise me if Clark's status is inevitably upgraded to 'wait, maybe!' After all, it is in the league's best interest to keep that game on the radar.) The bottom line: From ticket prices to TV audiences to the betting market, we are going to get a fascinating glimpse at the Caitlin Clark Effect in real time, ironically by omission. Another new CFB postseason format, plus a poached streaming exec Big talkers from the sports business industry: Other current obsessions: This week's U.S. Women's Open … watching the French Open on TNT … World Sevens Football … 'Shanaplan' post-mortems in Toronto … Vanderbilt Enterprises (which, sorry, makes me think of 'Vandelay Industries') … What's next for the PWHL? Year 2 of the Professional Women's Hockey League, which just wrapped up with the Minnesota Frost winning a second consecutive championship, was a massive success. Per my colleague Hailey Salvian: Next up: Expansion into Vancouver (naturally) and Seattle, bringing the league to 10, with roster rules set up to make the two new teams as competitive as possible as quickly as possible. The PWHL is a phenomenal example of a startup league capitalizing on pent-up fan interest and our wider 'surge era' in the popularity of women's pro sports. The league seems poised to join the WNBA and NWSL as part of a Big Three in North American women's pro leagues (eventually joined by — I'll predict — Athletes Unlimited Softball League, consolidation in women's pro volleyball into a single dominant league and NFL women's flag football). Ratings Point: 7.05 million Sunday's Indy 500 on Fox smashed TV tune-in expectations, zooming to the most-watched Indy 500 since 2008 (up 40 percent from last year's on NBC) and topping the Daytona 500 for only the third time in 30 years. (To say nothing of massively out-rating even the highest-rated F1 races in the U.S.) Advertisement Does this mean IndyCar has (left-)turned a corner, in terms of audience interest in its races on Fox? Not necessarily. The Indy 500 is one of the most iconic U.S. sports events on the calendar, and Fox did a great job of marketing to that casual interest (including the presence of Tom Brady). But IndyCar on Fox has our attention, which is a start. Sports Investor of the Week Anne Hathaway, who joined a consortium (led by Muse Capital) to purchase Italy's SailGP franchise. (Reboot idea: 'The Devil Wears a Life Jacket.') Runners-up: supermodel Karlie Kloss and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who were part of the investors brought in by the New York Liberty, funding that put the franchise's valuation at a staggering $450M (as first reported by The Athletic's Ben Pickman). Related: Add KC Current owners Angie and Chris Long to the list of NWSL owners expanding their footprint via the 'multi-club organization' model, acquiring top-flight Danish team HB Køge Women. Just curious: The 'X' Effect As referenced at the top, Caitlin Clark drives enormous attendance surges when the Fever play on the road. Out of curiosity, here are the leading 'road attendance' teams in other major leagues: MLB: 'Ohtani Effect' Dodgers first in 2025 and 2024 NBA: '1980s Effect' Lakers first in '25, Celtics first in '24 ('Curry Effect': Golden State top 3 both years) (Sidebar: As you'd expect, the Spurs jumped from the bottom five in road attendance to the middle of the pack once they acquired Victor Wembanyama.) NHL: 'Market Effect' From my colleague James Mirtle: 'When I've looked at this in the past, the answer is a team that's in a division with a lot of big-market teams that always sell out, so more of a schedule quirk than a team being an extra draw.' Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle 247 — 00:41 Try the game here! Apologies for the self-promotion, and as previewed last Wednesday: If you missed it, to coincide with the end of 'Around The Horn' last week, I wrote about my hapless career as a panelist on the show. Two more reads worth your time: Back next Wednesday! This week's challenge: Is there a 'MoneyCall Effect?' Let's find out! Forward this email to three friends or colleagues and tell them to subscribe to receive MoneyCall in their email every Wednesday (totally free, as are all The Athletic's other newsletters, too!).
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Caitlin Clark's impact on the WNBA could eclipse 'a billion dollars'
When the WNBA returned to action last week, Ryan Brewer, like many who follow the league, was curious to see how Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark might top her rookie-of-the-year season. Yet the interest of Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus and an expert at valuations, goes beyond Clark's box-score averages. After Clark's phenomenal popularity spiked attendance and merchandise sales and drew historic television ratings wherever the Fever played in 2024, Brewer was asked by the Indianapolis Star to evaluate her economic impact on the WNBA. He determined Clark was responsible for a staggering 26.5% of all WNBA economic activity last season, including revenue from merchandise, ticket sales and television. Advertisement When Brewer crunched the numbers to analyze her potential impact in 2025, he arrived at a valuation that 'is quite impressive,' Brewer said. 'If things just go as they were, and we have an expanded season of 22 home games with modest inflation, I'm looking at $875 [million],' Brewer told NBC News. 'And I could easily see that eclipsing a billion dollars on the economic impact of Caitlin Clark this year.' The WNBA's 29th season opens at a time when its basketball is impossible to untangle from its bottom line. And Clark has played a propulsive role in both. For the first time since 2008, the WNBA expanded this season to add a 13th team, the Golden State Valkyries. Next season, two more will debut in Toronto and Portland. As the WNBA's footprint grows, so do its coffers. In 2026, the league will enter the first year of an 11-year media-rights deal worth a reported $2.2 billion overall that is expected to triple its current media-rights revenues. (One of the media partners is NBC, which shares a parent company with NBC News.) Indiana Fever's Caitlin Clark against the New York Liberty on July 6, 2024, in Indianapolis. (Darron Cummings / AP file) Anticipating the arrival of the new media revenue, the players union opted out of its collective bargaining agreement with the league last October and will spend the upcoming months negotiating a new deal that the union hopes will lead to higher salaries. Advertisement Clark earned $76,535 as a rookie and this season will receive a slight pay raise, amounts dwarfed by her endorsement portfolio that reportedly includes an eight-year, $28 million deal with Nike. It would be 'impossible' to pay Clark what she is worth to the league, her agent told ESPN in February. That could be because although viewership across women's sports was already on the rise by the time Clark emerged as a superstar at the University of Iowa, her popularity has supercharged the WNBA's own. While an average of 17,035 fans attended the Fever's 20 home games — more than the city's NBA team, which shares the same arena, averaged over 41 games — overall WNBA attendance increased from an average of 6,615 in 2023 to 9,807. Last season, as Fever games produced the most-watched WNBA games ever on ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, CBS and NBA TV, leaguewide viewership also broke records, including an average of 1.2 million per ESPN broadcast. The WNBA, as a private company, does not disclose revenue figures, a league spokesperson said. Yet the league reported last year that its merchandise sales through Dick's Sporting Goods had increased by 233% over the previous season. A spokesperson for Fanatics, the WNBA's official e-commerce partner, said that Clark ranks in the top 20 of its top-selling athletes across all sports, and sixth among all basketball players, including the NBA. The rising tide associated with Clark continued to lift other boats: All WNBA merchandise sold by Fanatics increased by more than 500% last season versus 2023, the spokesperson added. Advertisement Clark's effect shows few signs of abating in 2025. Earlier this month, 1.3 million viewers tuned in on ESPN to watch an Indiana preseason game played at Clark's alma mater, Iowa — an audience that was bigger than all but two NBA preseason games on ESPN since 2010 (and both of those games included LeBron James), per Sports Business Journal. Of this season's 10 bestselling WNBA games on StubHub, all 10 involve the Fever, according to a spokesperson for the online ticket retailer. When the Fever are the visiting team, the average price of tickets sold jumps by 140%. And the average price of a ticket to catch Clark and Indiana on the road this year is $312, according to the company. Clark is 'not just driving demand for the Fever, she's elevating interest across the entire league,' Adam Budelli, a StubHub spokesperson, said in a statement. Last year, Sportico pegged the value of the Fever franchise at $90 million, slightly less than the estimated league average. Yet in Brewer's analysis, the net effect of Clark's presence drove his valuation of the Fever to closer to $340 million. Brewer also calculated that Clark's presence, should the interest in her performances be maintained, would result in an economic impact of approximately $41 million to the city of Indianapolis. Advertisement Clark wasn't the only rookie last season to draw significant interest to the league. Her rivalry with Chicago's Angel Reese, dating to college, led an average of 2.5 million viewers to watch their May 17 matchup, the most ever for a WNBA game on ESPN. Yet as Brewer analyzed attendance and viewership figures from the 2024 season, these indicated that Clark's influence was singularly responsible for the surge of new interest in the WNBA. Of the 24 WNBA-related broadcasts that drew at least 1 million television viewers last season, 21 involved her, according to an analysis by Sports Media Watch that included the league's draft and All-Star Game. All three WNBA games that drew more than 20,000 fans included the Fever. 'It's important to recognize that there is this rival and there are other rivals, but Caitlin Clark is illuminating the sport,' Brewer said. 'She particularly is the one who's driving in a new kind of demographic that is reaching new kinds of people from the traditional WNBA fan base that is causing this growth rate and also accelerating interest in corporate sponsorships.' To analyze her economic impact, Brewer in part created models that projected the WNBA's attendance for last season based on the league's growth in the years pre-Clark. He then compared it to the actual attendance change and found about 60% of that increase is attributable to Clark. Advertisement 'Her ability to fill up stadiums is amazing,' he said. And that interest has been felt strongly in Indianapolis, where a $78 million practice facility solely for the Fever is under construction. In 2024, after Indiana drafted Clark No. 1, Visit Indy, a nonprofit that promotes tourism to the city, sprung into action. It placed paid advertising throughout Iowa, including on social media, to test whether Clark's die-hard collegiate fans might have an appetite to make the trip to Indiana to watch her as a pro. Soon, visits to pages on Visit Indy's website dedicated to the Fever increased by 501%, said Chris Gahl, Visit Indy's executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Fever home games also corresponded with a bump in booked hotel rooms in the city, he said. Part of Gahl's job is to persuade those in charge of booking large, corporate meetings and conventions to host them in Indianapolis. Last year, he found a new way to entice nearly 50 planners to check out the city for the first time: Taking them to a Fever game. Advertisement The planners, who were predominantly women, 'would not have traveled here and visited here were it not for the invitation for them to come see a home Fever game,' Gahl said. 'An Indiana Fever home game is a very hot ticket.' This article was originally published on
CNN
22-05-2025
- Business
- CNN
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian talks to CNN about investment into Chelsea Women and women's sports
When entrepreneur and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian started to think about investing in women's soccer, opposition to the idea came from an unlikely source: His wife, tennis legend Serena Williams. 'When I first told Serena I was gonna buy or start a women's soccer team here in the States, she actually tried to talk me out of it, because I think she had been so exposed to the infrastructure around women's sports,' Ohanian explained to CNN Sports. 'Because of her lived experience, she actually was trying to talk me out of it because she had to kick down a lot of doors.' Ohanian, who this month purchased a minority stake in England's Chelsea FC Women, explained that such close proximity to the 23-time grand slam singles champion and her sister, Venus, showed 'proof of the business viability of women's professional sports.' Ohanian was the founding investor of Angel City FC, a Los Angeles-based team that began playing in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) in 2022 – the top division of the women's game in the US. The club then became the most valuable women's professional sports team in the world after a huge takeover agreement in 2024. Ohanian, whose investment in Chelsea is reported by British media to be worth more than $26 million for a 10% share of the club, is just one of many putting cash into women's sports. His investment announcement comes in the same month as the defending WNBA champion New York Liberty reportedly raised capital from investors at $450 million in what is thought to be a record valuation for a professional women's sports franchise, according to The Athletic, who cited sources familiar with the deal. Meanwhile, Ohanian's wife, Serena, is a minority owner of Angel City and Tiger Woods' and Rory McIlroy's innovative golf league the TGL, the Miami Dolphins – along with sister Venus – and in March, announced her ownership role in the expansion Canadian WNBA franchise, the Toronto Tempo. Ohanian said that he saw the reluctance of others to invest in women's soccer as an opportunity. 'When experts in a space try to talk me out of it, that's actually when I tend to lean in more because it tells me that sort of dissent or that pushback is usually where there's a tremendous opportunity for innovation and progress,' he said. The 42-year-old Ohanian announced the deal to invest in Chelsea Women earlier in May, saying he was 'proud' to help the 'iconic club' – already one of the most successful teams in women's soccer – become the most popular Women's Super League (WSL) team in the US. 'I think a lot of well-intentioned people historically have supported women's sports in a way that … actually held it back because it was viewed too much as charity, or they led with things like, 'Oh, I'm doing this because I have a daughter,'' he told CNN. 'No, I'm doing this because I think these are tremendous athletes.' He added that sports and incredible athletes are going to thrive in a time of growing use of artificial intelligence because 'the types of entertainment that are going to endure are the ones that are fundamentally human.' In 2024, Ohanian founded Athlos, a women's-only track and field event that debuted later that year. The event offers $60,000 for race winners and aims to champion female athletes across the world. 'One of the north stars for me five years ago – when I started on this journey of building, investing in and around women's professional sports – has been: This investment isn't just in the clubs, it's in the surrounding infrastructure that's gonna flow through every level of women's sports. 'For 100 years, professional sports has been by men for men. And when there have been women and women's teams, in many ways, they've been literally treated as just small men, which is pretty ridiculous, right?' he explained to CNN Sports. Ohanian said that teams like Chelsea, who this month secured a sixth consecutive WSL title, a domestic treble and remained unbeaten for 22 consecutive games, offer 'a chance to show folks something really, really special.' 'I'm glad the discourse has now shifted where people are realizing there's real opportunity here, but there's still so much more work to be done, and I really believe that this club could and should be the first billion dollar franchise, billion dollar club in women's sports.' CNN's Ben Church contributed reporting.
