It’s a good time to own an NBA franchise.
Fifteen years ago in 2010, Joe Lacob and Peter Guber paid $450 million to purchase the Golden State Warriors. Four championships and a new arena in the heart of San Francisco later, that franchise is worth $9.4 billion, according to new franchise valuations put together by the team at CNBC. The NBA’s least valuable franchise is the Memphis Grizzlies at $3.2 billion (and Robert Perra paid $377 million for the team in 2012).
Here are CNBC’s top 10 most valuable franchises in the NBA (click this link to see the methodology used to calculate these numbers).
1. Golden State Warriors $9.4 billion
2. New York Knicks $7.5 billion
3. Los Angeles Lakers $7 billion
4. Chicago Bulls $5.8 billion
5. Houston Rockets $5.7 billion
6. Brooklyn Nets $5.6B
7. Boston Celtics $5.5 billion
8. Los Angeles Clippers $5.4 billion
9. Miami Heat $5.1 billion
10. Dallas Mavericks $5 billion
It sounds wild, but if anything, those numbers might be low. CNBC ranks the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics as the seventh most valuable franchise, worth $5.5 billion. However, the real test of anything’s valuation is its sale price, and there are at least four bidders to buy the Celtics with the Grousbeck family (Boston’s current owners) expecting for a valuation higher than $6 billion.
With growing international interest and likely expansion in the coming years — with the expansion fees providing a boost of cash to teams’ bottom lines — expect those values to continue to climb.
