The cost of buying a sports team has soared in recent years, including record price tags in 2026 for the Los Angeles Lakers ($12.5 billion), Seattle Seahawks ($9.34 billion) and Los Angeles Angels ($4 billion). It has spurred talk of a sports valuation bubble.
Yes, sports team values are up huge, but they trail stock market gains over the past four years.
Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the current bull market, with the S&P 500 rising 118% since Oct. 12, 2022—the Nasdaq rose 162%, fueled by tech and AI stocks. It outpaces the 103% average gain in the five biggest North American men’s sports leagues. The average is 107% if you strip out MLS and focus on the other four leagues.
The NHL has been the best performer, up 140% since Sportico’s 2022 NHL valuations to $2.43 billion on average. The NFL average is up 126% to $9.34 billion, while the average NBA team is now worth $6.64 billion, up 121% since 2022.
MLB (+37% to $3.17 billion) and MLS (+32% to $767 million) are the laggards. MLB has faced a looming work stoppage and the meltdown of the regional sports network model, while MLS faces massive competition from soccer leagues around the globe for media, corporate and investor dollars.
Investors have flocked to sports because of their scarcity value, lucrative media rights, improving profitability, fan loyalty and AI-proofness. Sports teams’ valuations also have low correlations to the stock market typically, despite the lockstep gains since 2022 by equities and teams in the NHL, NFL and NBA.
The matching return profiles fall apart if you look earlier than October 2022. The S&P fell 19% overall in 2022 with supply chain disruptions, inflation and rising interest rates dinging stocks. Sports teams have never seen a decline like that in modern times.
MLB team values fell 8% over two years around the MLB strike in 1994 that canceled the World Series, per valuations data from Financial World. The stock market hit an all-time high of 1,547 in March 2000 before the dot-com bubble burst and triggered three straight years of double-digit stock market losses.
The S&P wouldn’t regain those 2000 highs until 2007, four months before another bear market slide started when the financial crisis nearly crippled the global banking system. The S&P 500 sank 56% from its peak in 2007 to its trough in 2009. The market didn’t return to its 2007 levels for six years. NFL and NBA team values were basically flat between 2008 and 2011 before continuing their ascent.
Avoiding the down years has made sports teams a much better investment than the stock market if you look over decades—we are ignoring dividends for stocks and teams in these numbers. The average NFL team was worth $175 million in 1996, and the current value means 14.2% in annual compound growth. The comparable rate for the S&P 500 is 8.4%.
The stock market and men’s sports teams can’t touch the recent growth in women’s sports. Sportico’s first NWSL valuations were in 2023, and the average was $66 million. It is up 179% in three years to $184 million. The WNBA rocket ship is even stronger, with a two-year gain of 346% from $96 million in 2024 to $428 million this year.
“There are people who are like, ‘I could have bought a team for $1 million five years ago,’” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said at Sportico’s September RISE event. “My response is usually, ‘You should have.’”