Major League Baseball is riding a wave of momentum with three years of attendance gains, soaring TV ratings, a crop of young stars and expanded global appeal. The 2023 rule changes to speed up the game have received near universal acclaim.
Yet, the sport also faces an existential crisis, with a three-headed monster of intertwined issues in revenue disparity, the future of media distribution and a looming labor crisis that hardliners warn will cancel the 2027 season.
Investors recognize the choppy waters ahead for MLB but are increasingly betting on the long-term economic prospects of the sport, as witnessed by a series of control and LP transactions during the past 12 months. That helped push the average franchise value up 12% to $3.17 billion, based on conversations with team executives, bankers, lawyers and investors familiar with team transactions. It is the biggest year-over-year franchise value gain for MLB since Sportico’s baseball valuations launched in 2021, as investors see the value proposition baseball offers relative to other sports team prices.
The one-year gain still trails the recent increases in the other major sports leagues; the NFL ($7.1 billion average) and NBA ($5.5 billion) are both up 20%, and the NHL ($2.1 billion) rose 17%. The WNBA ($269 million) and NWSL ($184 million) are in a very different growth stage, with 180% and 77% gains, respectively.
