NFL franchise valuations have risen 20% in the last year
The Dallas Cowboys are still the biggest team by far.
We’re now less than three weeks away from the opening game of the 2025-26 NFL season, when Super Bowl LIX champions the Philadelphia Eagles will take on the Dallas Cowboys to get this year’s action underway. Though the Eagles will be going into the game as the odds-on favorite, there’s no competition between the two when it comes to the size of the franchises off the field.
Per the latest annual NFL franchise valuation figures from Sportico released earlier this week, the Dallas Cowboys are (again) the league’s most valuable team by far — worth a staggering $12.8 billion, according to the publication’s estimates. That’s more than steak chain Texas Roadhouse ($11.5 billion), but some way off Texas Instruments ($176 billion).
It’s not just the Cowboys that have bloomed to become a huge, over $10 billion business, though; the NFL’s decision last August to open up the league to private equity dealmakers has seen two other sides join the 11-digit club and helped bump franchise valuation estimates by 20% on average over the past 12 months.
Sportico put the value of the Los Angeles Rams and the New York Giants at $10.4 billion and $10.3 billion, respectively, having both risen 34% each over the last year, based on local and national revenues, wider transaction metrics, and team-specific multipliers.
Climbing valuations across the board mean that the average NFL side is now worth $7.13 billion, compared to the average $4.6 billion estimates in the NBA — calculated before the approved $6.1 billion sale of the Boston Celtics made it the most expensive franchise in US sports history on Wednesday — and $2.82 billion in the MLB, from Sportico’s figures.
