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You're Invited To SportsMoney Premium | The Bottom Line On The Business Of Sports

Mike Ozanian
Forbes staff

I’m Mike Ozanian, founder of SportsMoney and assistant managing editor at Forbes. You’re invited to join me in my most ambitious project yet by signing up instantly for a special preview of the soon-to-launch SportsMoney Premium, the indispensable new Forbes newsletter on the business of sports and all the news driving the dollars. 

When I began valuing sports franchises in 1998, the average NFL team was worth $288 million. That figure today is $3 billion—an 11% annual growth rate, beating the S&P 500 by a full six percentage points. Across three decades covering the industry, I’ve compiled the most sophisticated proprietary database tracking revenue, expense, net worth and valuation numbers from around the sports world, from the big four American leagues to European soccer to new frontiers like esports and the biggest sports brands.

You’ll have exclusive access to my obsession, along with singularly expert analysis of the week’s sports business news. This subscriber-only newsletter will be the bottom line on team sales, media rights and stadium deals, plus player payrolls, technological innovations and collective bargaining agreements. As a subscriber, you’ll see reveals you can’t find on Forbes.com or anywhere else, not to mention the benefit of my insight as an industry insider.

I’m now ready to offer you a chance to be a part of action: Sign up instantly for a free trial, and share your thoughts and comments before the official launch right here. Let’s get to work.
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The following is a preview of the SportsMoney Premium
newsletter from Friday, March 19, 2021.
March 19th, 2021
THE BIG TAKE
Adjusted for inflation, Major League Soccer expansion fees have increased nearly eight-fold over the past decade. But Ron Burkle’s decision in late February to renege on his agreement to buy the Sacramento expansion team indicates the growth rate in MLS expansion fees has peaked. Burkle’s group was going to pay a $200 million expansion fee and invest another $300 million to build a soccer-specific stadium. Sacramento Republic FC (currently in the USL Championship league) was slated to join MLS in 2023 along with St. Louis City SC and bring the league’s roster to 30 teams.

Most MLS teams lose money every year. MLS owners fund those losses in part by divvying up expansion fees. But MLS is running out of cities to expand to. Who was going to cover Burkle’s losses? Without expansion fees, owners need revenue growth. The thinking at one point was that MLS would eventually get a bountiful TV deal. I don’t see it. MLS gets an average of $90 million a season through 2022 for national TV rights combined from Fox, ESPN and Univision, and teams get next to nothing for local broadcasting rights because ratings for many teams are miniscule. Even if MLS doubles the value of its television rights in its next deal—to $180 million a year, or $6.2 million for each of the 29 teams—it would pale in comparison with a $300 million expansion fee ($10.3 million per team). In short, the league’s economics do not justify a $500 million investment absent the ability to amortize that cost over 15 years for sizable tax benefits.
Forbes
MLS Expansion History Forbes
LITTLE DITTIES
MOST UNDERREPORTED STORY
On March 4, Paramount+ replaced and expanded on CBS All Access. The streaming service is set to include a bunch of sports programming, most notably the NFL and international soccer like the Champions League, and CBS Entertainment Group boss George Cheeks says Paramount+ will be the leader in live sports. This comes on the heels of NBCUniversal announcing it will shut down NBC Sports Network (NBCSN) by the end of 2021 and shift the bulk of its sports programming to the USA Network cable channel and the Peacock streaming service. The most fascinating part of the strategy by both Paramount+ and Peacock is that, after several years of experts predicting live sports streaming was going to be led by nontraditional digital-exclusive platforms, we ended up with established media companies controlling live sports streaming. Why? Brand power and scale.
A MORE CHALLENGING PAY-TV ECOSYSTEM
AT&T has finalized a deal to sell a minority stake in DirecTV to private equity shop TPG. DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket package was once viewed as so valuable that when AT&T was negotiating to buy DirecTV in 2014, it had the right to back out of the deal if DirecTV did not renew its agreement with the NFL. (DirecTV pays the NFL an average of $1.5 billion a year for those rights through 2022, 50% more than in its previous agreement with the league.) Fast-forward to today, and according to Wells Fargo Securities, the minority stake transaction values DirecTV at about $16.3 billion, or four times EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). That’s a far cry from the $48 billion ($67 billion including debt) that AT&T paid for the business in 2015. Why? At the end of 2015, AT&T reported 19.8 million DirecTV subscribers and 5.6 million cable TV subscribers under its U-verse brand, for a total of 25.4 million. AT&T had a total of just 16.5 million cable and satellite TV subscribers at the end of 2020, plus about 650,000 TV subscribers who get service over the internet.
A TEMPERED IMPACT ON NFL TEAM VALUES
On March 18, the NFL announced new long-term deals with its media partners that, according to a source, will see the league’s national media revenue rise to an average of $10.27 billion a year, split evenly among the 32 teams, up from $5.67 billion—an increase of 80%. The new deals with CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN/ABC for weekend and Monday night games start in 2023. Amazon begins its new streaming deal in 2022 and replaces Fox for Thursday Night Football. Including DirecTV ($1.5 billion a year) and Yahoo ($450 million a year), the NFL’s current deals deliver an average of $7.6 billion a season.
Forbes
2020 NFL Media Rights Value VIP+ Variety Intelligence Platform
In September, Forbes pegged the average NFL team value at $3 billion, 7% higher than in 2019. The increase was mainly due to expectations that the league’s next national media deals would roughly double in value, so unless a huge surprise with the Sunday Ticket package is still coming, the new media deals will not significantly impact team values. One possible reason the new deals fall a bit short of the forecast: TV ratings were bad last season.

NFL REGULAR-SEASON TV RATINGS FOR 2020 VS. 2019

ESPN Monday Night Football: down 3%
CBS Sunday afternoon: down 4%
Fox Sunday afternoon: down 6%
Fox Thursday night: down 6%
NBC Sunday Night Football: down 16%
NO NEW STADIUM FOR ROMA
If you think building a new stadium in the U.S. can be tough, try Italy. AS Roma has been trying to build a new stadium for almost a decade, and its owners recently announced they would give up for the time being because of political hurdles and the pandemic, which has taken a big bite out of stadium revenue. James Pallotta got so frustrated with the stadium process that he sold the Serie A team to the Texas-based Friedkin Group in August for about $700 million. To the detriment of the team’s value, Roma currently plays in the antiquated Stadio Olimpico. Consider that during the 2018-19 season (the last full year with fans in the stadium), Roma had match-day revenue (stadium gate receipts and stadium corporate hospitality) of $37 million. By contrast, its Serie A rival Juventus, which moved into the modern Allianz Stadium in 2011, had match-day revenue of $75 million. This helps explain why, for our most recent soccer team valuations, in May 2019, we pegged Juventus at $1.512 billion and AS Roma at $622 million. 
TEXAS RANGERS TRY TO MAKE UP GROUND
The Texas Rangers are the first team in MLB to announce they will permit full attendance at their games this season. They badly need people in Globe Life Field, which opened last year without fans in attendance for regular-season baseball. Multiple sports bankers say the team’s owners had to pony up over $130 million last year in capital calls related to cost overruns for the $1.2 billion ballpark and the team’s operating losses. The cost to the city of Arlington for the new ballpark is capped at $500 million, and the team pays the rest.
hello world
Mike Ozanian
Assistant Managing Editor
I'm the assistant managing editor for SportsMoney at Forbes Media and the managing editor and cohost of the Forbes SportsMoney TV show on the YES Network. I've been compiling valuations for professional sports teams for three decades.
You can follow me on Twitter @MikeOzanian.
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