Investments don’t get much better than the one that Robert Kraft made in the New England Patriots. Kraft bought the team for $172 million in 1994, and last week Sportico valued the Pats at $5.88 billion—a figure 34 times that of the purchase price.
Has any other franchise appreciated as much as the Patriots over the same period of time? As we did in the first part of this series, we have to use valuations from Financial World and Forbes to help answer that question.
In the NFL at least, the Patriots are, in fact, the big winners of the past quarter century. They climbed from the bottom half of the league in 1996 to become the second most valuable in 2021 and saw their worth increase by a greater percentage than any other team.
New England’s ascension still hasn’t been enough to catch the Dallas Cowboys, which has been the most valuable U.S. sports team for 18 of the past 25 years. The Cowboys were actually temporarily dethroned between 2000 and 2006 by the Washington Commanders, one of the slowest-growing teams of the most recent decade.
The last year that the most valuable sports team didn’t play on the gridiron was 1992, when the New York Yankees were on top. Throughout the 1990s, there was a mix of NFL, NBA and MLB teams in the top 20, but during the 10-year stretch from 2002 to 2011, only the Yankees cracked the list among non-NFL clubs.
Recently, a few baseball and basketball franchises have rejoined the fray. Three California NBA teams—the Golden State Warriors (49x), the Los Angeles Clippers (38x) and the Los Angeles Lakers (32x)—have all multiplied their values more than any other major sports teams since Michael Jordan began his quest for a second three-peat in 1996.
The New York Knicks (28x) haven’t fared too badly, either, edging out their neighbors the New York Jets (26x), New York Giants (25x) and New York Yankees (25x), who each rank in the top three for value growth in their respective leagues. Meanwhile, a relocation from Montreal greatly benefited the Washington Nationals (28x), baseball’s leader in percentage increase.
Although only one hockey team has appreciated more than the average NFL or NBA team since 1996, the Edmonton Oilers (26x) are an outlier. They were named the single least valuable team in the four major U.S. sports in 2003, but by last year had clawed all the way into the NHL’s top 10, for myriad reasons. The CBA following the 2004-05 lockout instituted a salary cap on rich teams, the Canadian dollar strengthened, Rogers Arena opened in 2016 and the Oilers have repeatedly sold out that new arena to an avid local fan base.
On the flip side, the Anaheim Ducks (6x) are the only major sports franchise whose growth trails the stock market between 1996 and 2021. Bringing up the rear in the NBA are the Detroit Pistons (8x), whose Palace of Auburn Hills was one of the first modern-style NBA arenas with a large number of luxury suites. The team was the third most valuable basketball club in 1996 before a prolonged automobile industry slump led to a regional population decline.
Like the Pistons, a number of smaller-market NFL teams entered the stadium-building rush early and saw their values spike in the late 1990s as a result. The Baltimore Ravens, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cleveland Browns and Carolina Panthers each ranked among the top five most valuable sports franchises at one point, before eventually being left in the dust by bigger markets.
It’s hard to imagine that, 25 years from now, a team like the New England Patriots or the Golden State Warriors might not be one of the most valuable sports franchises, but given how different the top 10 looked in 1996 versus 2021, it’s almost certainly bound to happen.
