Yankees Top Forbes' Annual List of Most Valuable Baseball Franchises
Yankees Top Forbes' Annual List of Most Valuable Baseball Franchises

by Cesar Tordesillas

New York, NY

The New York Yankees have topped Forbes' annual list of the most valuable Major League Baseball franchises, with an estimated worth of $2.5 billion.

With that amount, the Yankees are now the most valuable team in the United States, eclipsing the $2.3 billion that Forbes valued the Dallas Cowboys in August 2013.

The Yankees have been the most valuable baseball team for each of the 17 years that Forbes magazine has published the list.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, bought two years ago by Guggenheim Partners for $2.15 billion, came in second on Forbes' list at $2 billion.

The Dodgers have a 25-year television deal with Time Warner Cable worth more than $8 billion but they lost a battle with Major League Baseball and will have to share more revenue from that deal than originally projected.

Rounding out the most valuable top five are the Boston Red Sox ($1.5 billion), Chicago Cubs ($1.2 billion) and San Francisco Giants ($1 billion).

Forbes says the average value of an MLB team is $811 million, up 9 percent from last season. Team values have risen year over year, thanks in part to television deals with ESPN, Fox and TBS that begin this year and pay twice as much as the previous deals.

The New York Mets, whose attendance has slipped in each of their first five years at Citi Field, fell 1 percent to $800 million.

The Miami Marlins are down 4 percent to $500 million, and the Houston Astros fell an astounding 15 percent to $530 million due in part to the implosion of the regional sports network that was broadcasting its games.

 

 

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"Yankees Top Forbes' Annual List of Most Valuable Baseball Franchises"