The net worth of sports teams: US domination and what Europe needs to do to compete
Getty Images When speaking about sports teams , which come to mind first? It depends where you’re from, but an average sports fan will always give you a few team names like the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Yankees, Real Madrid, Barcelona , and so on. The most popular teams are also some of the most valuable in terms of net worth. Every year, Forbes establishes a ranking of the 50 most valuable sports teams in the world . This ranking is based on a calculation where team values reflect enterprise values (equity plus debt). Analyzing the ranking Forbes Let’s analyze the top 25 ranked teams. There’s a lot of stars and stripes , right? As a matter of fact, only five of them are non-US. Even though Europeans are not part of the majority, they still get a nice share of the cake with some of the highest-ranking positions, thanks to Real Madrid and Barcelona in third and fourth place, respectively. Looking even closer, we notice that only four sports are represented in this ranki