Team valuations are on the rise across all professional sports leagues, with the NBA leading the way. Colin Salao, sports business reporter at TheStreet, breaks down what's behind the explosive growth in value for professional sports teams.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: And why are we seeing valuations go up across all professional sports leagues, not just the NBA?
COLIN SALAO: Yeah again, all professional leagues, the NBA is growing at 35% year on year, according to Forbes. But the NFL and the NHL are also growing at double digit year on year growth in terms of valuation and even smaller growing leagues like the NWSL, MLS. They're seeing huge growth. And the big reason for that, I think, is because sports is stable in a media environment that is evolving significantly. Sports has been able to bring fans through, you know, cord cutting. People are no longer watching cable as much. They're moving into these streaming services. Social media is taking over, but live sports continue to get millions and tens of millions of viewers.
And so from the broadcasters all the way to sponsors, they're seeing that and they're thinking, well, we can keep putting our money into that because no one's going to stop watching sports and so that's driving up valuation or keeping people interested. And particularly for the NBA, their media rights deal is coming up in two years. So people are expecting that to double, potentially triple. And so that's why valuations are also increasing with the expectation of this new revenue that's about to come in.
