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If you ever had dreams of winning the lottery and buying the Mariners, you're probably going to need a few more bucks than you used to. Thanks for ruining the shower daydreams of me naive kids everywhere, Bloomberg.
Determining what a franchise is worth is always a scientific process that ends up being entirely unscientific, because there's a good about of guesstimating that goes into it. Still, I wouldn't be able to come anywhere near calculating the value of a franchise, because I am not a financial analyst. Bloomberg presumably hires people that are better equipped to tackle this question than I, and here's their superior conclusion.
The Mariners rank 18th among baseball's most valuable franchises, which is about where the Mariners have ranked in a lot of things over the past decade. Bloomberg has a neat little infographic to see all of the components that make up the valuation, but here's the gist of it.
- Total value: $720 million
- Team revenue: $225 million (14th)
- Gate receipts: $48 million (20th)
- Concessions: $17 million (18th)
- Sponsorship: $29 million (5th)
- Media rights: $83 million ($12th)
- Parking: $4 million (15th)
- Attendance: 1.8 million (25th)
Bloomberg also reports a net loss of -$1 million for 2013 for the Mariners. This is all wrapped up with a three star confidence rating, which isn't really explained. Is it confidence in the accuracy of the valuation? Confidence in the franchise going forward? Confidence of the author's mood during that particular infographic? Confidence that this is mildly amusing to read? Three stars sounds pretty good.
Ok, so it's probably the first. There's always been varying opinions on what the franchise is worth and how much money the Mariners making or losing, but here's another one from a source that probably knows more than most. Bloomberg also explains that the Dodgers sale put the value of other organizations through the roof.
When the Los Angeles Dodgers sold for $2.15 billion last year, the purchase price — 54 percent more than prevailing estimates — didn't just elevate the fortunes of the team's owners. It raised the valuations of every franchise in Major League Baseball. Bloomberg News spent nine months compiling and analyzing the numbers behind the business, and determined that MLB's 30 teams are worth about 35 percent more on average.
There's now a whopping ten teams valued at over a billion dollars, according to Bloomberg. Baseball is a big ass business that's only getting bigger, and the Dodgers made a lot of other owners some big time hypothetical money when they changed hands.
Here's more about Bloomberg's methodology in compiling these numbers, though there's still no mention of how confident the article's editor was in writing the article. I say he's at three stars, since he didn't list give a rating of less than three stars to any of the franchises. Seems appropriate.