MLB clubs are now worth a record $2.6 billion on average—but uncertainty around the league’s media rights is putting them on the warning track.
Three years after the NFL, and just one after the NBA, Major League Baseball has its first $8 billion team: the New York Yankees.
The Bronx Bombers, who have led the ranking of baseball’s most valuable clubs every year since Forbes began publishing the list in 1998, are now worth an estimated $8.2 billion. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the second-most-valuable team for 14 straight years, are up to $6.8 billion after a 25% jump from 2024, placing the defending World Series champions among the 10 most valuable teams in the world, from any sport.
The largest increase this year belongs to the A’s, who climbed 50%, to $1.8 billion, even as they move into a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento for the next three seasons. Many around the sport have high hopes for the Athletics’ eventual move to Las Vegas and the plan for a new stadium there, but after a miserable end to their 57-year run in Oakland, even the stopgap situation isn’t looking so bad, with the team’s season-ticket base having grown significantly since last year.
Still, while MLB team values continue to rise—to a record average of $2.6 billion, up 8% from 2024—there are some reasons for concern. Four clubs are flat year-over-year—the St. Louis Cardinals, Seattle Mariners, Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays—and the Chicago White Sox actually declined 2%, to $2 billion.
At the same time, the league’s most recent control stake sale, David Rubenstein’s $1.725 billion purchase of the Baltimore Orioles last year, was priced at 5.3 times revenue, and on Forbes’ 2025 valuation list, the league’s spread of multiples stretches from 11.3x for the Yankees down to 3.3x for the Miami Marlins. Compare those numbers with the higher ranges in the NBA (10.1 to 15.6) and the NFL (7.5 to 10.8), which reflect investors’ greater appetite for the franchises in those leagues and greater optimism for their revenue outlook.
Baseball’s growth is similarly starting to lag behind those other sports’. Over the last five years, NFL teams have appreciated 87% on average, to $5.7 billion, and NBA teams have soared 101%, to $4.4 billion. In the same period, MLB clubs are up 36%.
To some extent, that disparity reflects MLB’s long-standing systemic challenges, starting with the lack of a true salary cap. Baseball also faces labor uncertainty—again—with its collective bargaining agreement set to expire in 2026 and the players’ union already raising the alarm that it expects another lockout. Above all, though, the league’s flatter trajectory is a reflection of the media rights landscape.
The NFL, which announced the first agreements of its new television package in 2021, is guaranteed $126 billion in national media money through 2033, and the NBA is due to collect $76 billion in 11-year broadcast deals that take effect next season. By contrast, MLB’s current deals with ESPN, Fox and TBS were set to pay $12.9 billion over seven years, and the league is having to rejigger its lineup on the fly after agreeing with ESPN last month to opt out of the final three years of their arrangement, which was worth an average of $550 million a year.
Making matters worse, much of the league is still grappling with the fallout of the 2023 collapse of regional sports network operator Diamond Sports Group (since rebranded as Main Street Sports Group). The company emerged from bankruptcy in January, but several teams had to scramble to find new broadcast homes, and the vast majority of the teams that have remained with Main Street are believed to have taken a significant discount. That is especially bad news in baseball, where local cable, on average, made up 19% of teams’ total revenue last season—far more than in the NBA (13%) or the NFL, where it is essentially a rounding error.
MLB, however, was not pleased with the level of promotion it was getting on ESPN and thinks it could also come out ahead financially with a new partner, or perhaps a group of partners divvying up smaller slices of its broadcast rights. And the expiration of the national TV deals after 2028, along with a smaller digital agreement with Apple, will present an opportunity for a broader media overhaul. Commissioner Rob Manfred, for instance, is pushing a more centralized model that could bundle together local media rights—the way the NFL has done with its Sunday Ticket package—and is reportedly considering tying the league’s domestic rights to its international rights, which to this point have largely been treated as a throw-in in negotiations with networks.
That change in strategy overseas would capitalize on the excitement around the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, whose playoff games last year drew massive viewership in his homeland and who has helped attract new Asian-based corporate partners to MLB. The sponsorship picture is also improving more generally, with 24 teams now sporting brand logos on their uniforms and the Washington Nationals hoping to join them soon. That jersey patch program has generated more than $200 million in revenue across its two seasons, and MLB’s sponsorship growth now exceeds that of the other North American major pro men’s leagues.
With well-received rule changes shortening games and creating more action on the basepaths, MLB saw regular-season attendance cross 71 million fans last year—its best figure since 2017—and clubs averaged $407 million in total revenue, rising 8% from 2023’s record $378 million.
Coming off that success, the Pohlad family is seeking to sell the Minnesota Twins with an asking price believed to be $1.7 billion, and the A’s are reportedly targeting a $2 billion valuation for a minority stake. And the Rays, who are temporarily playing at a minor league ballpark in the wake of Hurricane Milton, might end up on the auction block as well, after they pulled out of an agreement with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County to build a new stadium. Manfred, who has said Tampa Bay must find a permanent solution to its stadium situation before the league can add expansion franchises, is now reportedly pressuring Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg to sell.
Baseball may soon learn whether investors see its teams as a home run.
