Trinity Rodman #2 of Washington Spirit evades Sarah Schupansky #11 of Gotham FC during the NWSL Championship 2025 final between Washington Spirit and NJ\/NY Gotham FC at PayPal Park on November 22, 2025 in San Jose, California.<\/p>\n
Lyndsay Radnedge\/isi Photos | Isi Photos | Getty Images<\/p>\n
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Last week, the National Women’s Soccer League awarded\u00a0a new expansion franchise<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 in Columbus, Ohio \u2014 to an ownership group led by Haslam Sports Group for a fee of $205 million.<\/p>\n This represents a $40 million jump from the $165 million that billionaire\u00a0Arthur Blank\u00a0reportedly\u00a0paid for<\/a>\u00a0the league’s Atlanta franchise in November. And that $165 million itself was a jump of $55 million from the reported\u00a0$110 million fee<\/a>\u00a0Denver paid in January of last year.<\/p>\n Rewind to 2022, and the expansion fee for a new NWSL club was\u00a0just $2 million<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the surface, this appears to be a story about the NWSL’s growth. Postseason attendance rose 11% this past season, according to the league. Nearly 1.2 million people\u00a0watched the NWSL finals<\/a>, up 22% from a year ago, including a whopping 70% jump in the 18-to-34 demographic, the NWSL said. <\/p>\n It makes sense that investors would want to get in now given the league’s growth trajectory.<\/p>\n But, according to investors and bankers, something else is going on that’s affecting the NWSL’s valuations that has absolutely nothing to do with soccer. It has to do with a trickle-down investment thesis driven by the outsized businesses of the NFL and NBA.<\/p>\n Wealthy investors have long been interested in sports ownership, trophy assets that have also produced outsized returns on investment. The introduction of private equity investment, first adopted in the NFL in 2024<\/a>, has added to the pool of possible buyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n This dynamic is welcome news for the entire professional sports industry, which is also benefiting from another strategic investment play \u2014 the anti-artificial intelligence trade. Betting on live events is a counter-strategy for those who want less exposure to the tech in a market\u00a0driven<\/a>\u00a0by AI investments.<\/p>\n That’s helped supercharge valuations of the most valuable sports teams in the U.S. According to CNBC Sport<\/a>, the average NFL team is now valued at $7.65 billion. In 2010, NFL teams were worth, on average,\u00a0about $1 billion<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Get the CNBC Sport newsletter directly to your inbox<\/p>\n The CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media, delivered weekly to your inbox.<\/p>\n Subscribe here to get access today<\/a>.<\/p>\n The average value of an NBA team is now $5.52 billion, 18% higher than a year ago<\/a>. Fifteen years ago, the average NBA team was worth $369 million. That’s an increase of 1,396%. The S&P 500<\/a> is up about 422% over the same time period.\u00a0<\/p>\n NBA and NFL ownership stakes are becoming too pricey for a class of buyers who have active interest in being a sports team owner \u2014 even at the minority stake level. Former New York Giants quarterback\u00a0Eli Manning\u00a0said as much in an interview with CNBC Sport\u00a0last year.<\/a><\/p>\n “It’s too expensive for me,” Manning said of a potential minority stake in his longtime team. “A 1% stake valued at $10 billion turns into a very big number.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Equity research firm Bernstein wrote in a recent note to clients that NFL team valuations have risen about 17 times in 25 years, “the kind of returns sufficient to give any portfolio manager a legendary status and easily trumping the S&P index or any emerging market index on the planet.”<\/p>\n The main cause of the valuation growth stems from the enormous size of the league’s media rights. The NFL signed an 11-year, $111 billion media rights deal in 2021 \u2014 and\u00a0now wants<\/a>\u00a0even more money. The NBA followed with an\u00a011-year, $77 billion deal<\/a>\u00a0of its own, starting with the 2025 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n Splitting national TV dollars among teams allows even the lowest revenue teams \u2014 the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies \u2014 to be valued at $5.9 billion and $3.75 billion, respectively, according to CNBC estimates.<\/p>\n There’s a fear <\/a>that “second-tier” sports, including MLB and NHL, may be at risk of losing media rights dollars as the NFL flexes its muscle and asks for more from its media partners. The more money that goes to the NFL, the less money there is for everyone else.<\/p>\n One might expect that dynamic to negatively affect the valuations for those sports. But according to these bankers and investors, that’s not happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the NBA and NFL have priced out buyers, there’s now increased demand for sports teams with more affordable valuations. That’s helped drive the recent NWSL surge, they say. There’s more liquidity at NWSL team price points, which has led to bidding wars and soaring valuations.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the most recent winning buyers \u2014 Blank and the Haslams \u2014 are already owners of NFL and other sports teams, they’ve had to pay increasingly high prices to fight off other offers. There are far more buying groups willing to write a consortium check for $200 million than pay $1 billion or more for minority stakes in the biggest leagues.<\/p>\n “There’s a lot of demand to get into the sports business but people can’t write the checks to buy into the big four anymore. So what they’re doing is they’re substituting,” said veteran sports banker\u00a0Sal Galatioto, president of Galatioto Sports Partners. “When supply is fixed and demand goes up, people will bid more to win. The underlying economics are not as important.”<\/p>\n The San Diego Padres\u00a0are finalizing a sale<\/a>\u00a0for $3.9 billion, a record for MLB, despite the team’s regional sports network\u00a0falling apart<\/a>\u00a0a few years ago. While nearly $4 billion is a lot of money, it’s still well below the average value of an NFL or NBA team.<\/p>\n “I’ve got investors coming up to me saying, ‘I can’t afford the NFL and NBA, what do you have for me in MLB, NHL?'” said one prominent sports banker, who asked to speak anonymously because the discussions were private.<\/p>\n The success of the NBA and NFL has funneled all the way down to the bottom of the sports food chain, said\u00a0Rick Horrow, CEO of Horrow Sports Ventures.<\/p>\n “Major League Cricket was at $5 million. Now the value’s at $30 [million] and going higher. Major League Pickleball two years ago was at $5 million. Now the value is at\u00a0$15 million<\/a>\u00a0or higher,” said Horrow.<\/p>\n Some of this sounds a little like a sports investment bubble, where valuations are divorced from the underlying financials of the leagues themselves.<\/p>\n That’s a real worry for smaller, less established leagues, said\u00a0Jasmine Robinson,\u00a0managing partner at Monarch Collective, the\u00a0largest women’s sports investment fund<\/a>,\u00a0with $250 million to invest. It’s why Monarch has focused most of its funds on the WNBA and the NWSL, rather than more emergent leagues, Robinson said.<\/p>\n “Sports has historically been a great investment, but that’s really only for the biggest leagues. It’s not really like you can do any sports deal and you’re going to make money,” Robinson said. “There’s been real scarcity. You do need to be in the leagues that really are going to be leaders to make money. We wouldn’t make a bet on every women’s sports league.”<\/p>\n The big question may be what the threshold is for an established league if there’s an economic downturn that turns off the investment faucet. Monarch is betting the WNBA and the NWSL are above the line, but WNBA franchises have historically never made money, and now they need to pay out far more money to players after this year’s\u00a0new collective bargaining agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n