The 10 Richest Sports Franchise Owners in America

Despite their disappointing performances on the field, the Dallas Cowboys are ensuring that their owner Jerry Jones remains a very wealthy man.

When Jones bought the Texas football team for $150 million in 1989, it was a financial gamble. Decades later, that gamble has paid off: By 2024, the Cowboys had made Jones a billionaire and become the first NFL team ever to be worth more than $10 billion, according to a sports business outlet Sporty.

Despite the record fee, it is unlikely that Jones will accept any offers from potential buyers in the near future.

“If I had to sell the team tomorrow, I wouldn’t accept less than $10 billion,” Jones said in 2018. “But I’m not suggesting I would accept $10 billion for them. The Cowboys are simply not for sale. They are a long-term asset and my immediate family — who have helped make them what they are today — will own the Cowboys long after I’m gone.”

In choosing the Cowboys despite an ever-increasing sticker price, Jones appears to have made a very prescient decision. Sports teams have seen dramatic increases in valuation over the past three decades — something experts have attributed to several factors, most notably the rising value of media rights packages.

“The idea that (professional sports) is a money-losing proposition was still in people’s minds into the 1990s,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross. The Bell in 2022. “’How to become a millionaire? Start as a multimillionaire and buy a sports team.’”

The average value of an NFL team rose from $175 million in 1996 to $3.48 billion in 2021; the value of an NBA team rose from $127 million to $2.48 billion; MLB teams rose from $115 million to $191 billion. Even the NHL, which is consistently the least popular of the four major sports leagues, saw the average value of its teams grow 1,112% between 1996 and 2021, according to Sporty.

In 2024, investing in sports is both a reliable way to make money and the ultimate status symbol for some of the world’s wealthiest people. Most experts seem to agree that the high value of professional sports teams is not going to diminish any time soon.

“Every time I thought we had hit a ceiling, I was wrong,” Michael Leeds, a professor at Temple University and co-author of Economics of Sports, told The Ringer.

“As long as there is an oligarch somewhere, you will see people with the money and the resources to buy these teams.”

Read on to find out more about the 10 richest American sports franchise owners.