Forbes magazine’s annual valuation of MLB teams is out. They have found a lot of profit in the sport as every single team is now worth $1 billion or more.
By Forbes’ reckoning, the Atlanta Braves have the 12th most valuable franchise in the sport.
This is the 22nd year that Forbes has crunched the numbers and tried to come up with guesses on team values, which admittedly is a tricky science.
Because nearly all teams are privately held, the researchers don’t have the means of getting detailed looks at the books. Instead, they have to pay attention to industry news and market conditions for the basis of their work.
This includes things such as new TV deal announcements, ticket sales, merchandise sales, and the value of MLB-owned enterprises like MLB Advanced Media and the MLB Network cable channel.
Something that may be helpful to Forbes is that the Atlanta Braves – being corporate-owned by a publicly-traded company – does have to reveal much of their revenue and debt information.
Because of this, it’s likely that the Braves’ franchise valuation is about as accurate as it can be.
The Numbers
Forbes determined that the Atlanta Braves are worth $1.7 billion dollars at this time. Now that may in fact be an accurate number, but it doesn’t mean that you could write a check for that amount (if you happened to win half-a-dozen Georgia Lotteries) and get Liberty Media to accept it.
Let’s look at the Miami Marlins (briefly), for instance. 19 months ago, this team was sold to Bruce Sherman and a group including Derek Jeter for $1.2 billion dollars.
No, Forbes didn’t have them positioned at this figure at that time. In early 2017, their review put them at $940 million… even as they were almost immediately flirting with purchase bids said to be in the $1.6-1.7 billion range.
While they did “settle” at $1.2 billion, that number was still a 25% premium above Forbes’ number.
In that same article just cited, they noted (in 2017) that another report placed the value of the Atlanta Braves at $1.63 billion, 9% above Forbes’ position at the time… still that’s well below the 25% premium that Jeffrey Loria cashed in for the Marlins.
Rare Commodities
Fact is, there are only 30 MLB teams and they don’t often show up on the trading block. This immediately creates strong competition, particularly for the more favored franchises… and Miami wasn’t really one of those.
The other aspect of this – like it or not – is that Liberty Media is making some money for its investors via the Atlanta Braves… which is exactly what the company is supposed to be doing.
The Atlanta Braves tracking stock, BATRK, is currently trading in the range of $28 per share, up close to100% since it was issue in early 2016, and well over 100% from it’s all-time low of $13.02 shortly after it hit the market.
How many stocks do you know of that have doubled in value over 3 years’ time?
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Liberty Media – whether you like them or not – has also put the Atlanta Braves in position to make a killing in revenue over the next several years with the Battery Atlanta development as they also work off their own stadium debts.
Interestingly enough, deals like the contract extensions to Ronald Acuña and Ozzie Albies will also enable them to hold costs down over the next decade as them continue to build a team that should be able to contend for several years in a row.
Sure – we can lampoon that phrase “financial flexibility” all we want, but fact is that it will definitely provide benefits down the line for this team.
So how much are the Braves actually worth if someone were to try and get LM’s attention for a purchase?
You’ll probably need to bring the extra-large checkbook for this one… perhaps something in the range of $2.2-2.5 billion.