Spain may have been embarrassingly dethroned as World Cup holders, but Real Madrid and Barcelona are still champions at making money after they were named as the world’s two richest sports clubs.
For the second successive year, Forbes business magazine tagged European champions Real Madrid, where Cristiano Ronaldo plays, as the No. 1 sports team with a value of US$3.44 billion. Barcelona, the home of Lionel Messi, Neymar and now the notorious Luis Suarez, are second in the chart with a value of US$3.2 billion, while English giants Manchester United are ranked No. 3 at US$2.81 billion, despite their miserable season.
The only other soccer club in the top 10 are German champions Bayern Munich, whose value of US$1.85 billion is good enough for seventh spot.
The rest of the top 10 is from MLB and the NFL.
The New York Yankees are No. 4, valued at US$2.5 billion, with the Dallas Cowboys, worth US$2.3 billion, holding fifth place.
With 30 teams in the top 50, for the second consecutive year, the NFL occupies 60 percent of this year’s list.
The magazine’s full list also includes six teams from MLB and four from the NBA.
The NFL’s prominent standing on the list and the potential sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft head Steve Ballmer for US$2 billion shows the value of big market sports teams in the US is higher than ever.
Ballmer’s proposed record purchase price for the Clippers is 15 times the revenue. By comparison, in March the Milwaukee Brewers were sold for five times the revenue.
The Clippers sale is hung up in the US court system. Forbes valued the team at US$575 million in January before the tentative deal was announced.
Forbes said the stock market’s bull run over the past five years, soaring TV rights and a limited number of teams for sale has contributed to skyrocketing values, such as for the Clippers.
The average value of the top 50 teams is US$1.34 billion, which is an 8 percent increase from last year, according to Forbes, which has been rating the world’s leading sports clubs since 1998.
The New York Mets were one of three teams that dropped off this year’s top 50 — the other drop-offs include the Oakland Raiders in the NFL and McLaren in Formula 1.
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