Cowboys become first sports franchise ever to reach $10 billion valuation

The Cowboys, though not not yet mathematically eliminated from playoff contention this season, will almost certainly extend their championship drought to a 29th year.

Nevertheless, they are continuing their dynasty as the most valuable sports franchise on the planet… by far.

Forbes has released its annual list of the NFL’s most valuable teams, and the Cowboys have come out on top for the ninth straight year, with a hefty margin separating them from everyone else.

The team that Jerry Jones bought in 1989 for a then-record $140 million now has a valuation of $10.1 billion. That figure is up 12% from last year and makes the club the first franchise- in any sport- to hit a staggering eleven digits.

Dallas was also the first team to reach the $5 billion threshold (in 2018) and the $6 billion mark, in 2021. To further illustrate how exponentially the NFL’s coffers have exploded in recent years, consider that even the Cincinnati Bengals, the league’s least valuable franchise for 2024, have now reached $4 billion, a number that was an unthinkable record when the Cowboys hit it… only nine years ago.

The Cowboys’ current $10.1 billion valuation is $2.5 billion ahead of the second-ranked team, the Los Angeles Rams, and more than double that of 11 other NFL teams.

Worth noting, though: that latter group of clubs includes Baltimore, Buffalo, and Detroit, teams that all have a much better chance of winning a ring before the 5-8 Cowboys… as well as the Kansas City Chiefs, who seek to win an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl this season.

One has to wonder if Jones would trade a sliver of his valuation for some of the success those teams are enjoying this year. (The most jaded fans assume he would not.)

A further breakdown of the Cowboys’ $10.1 billion valuation shows that nearly $800 million in 2023 came from local revenue, meaning ticket sales, sponsorships, merchandise, and other streams specific to the Cowboys. No other NFL team even topped $400 million.

Almost four billion dollars of the $10.1 billion total is the Cowboys’ portion attributable to revenue shared among the league’s 32 teams. The size of Dallas’s market counts for another $2.27 billion. AT&T Stadium as a venue counts for $1.99 billion of value, and the Dallas Cowboys brand itself contributes $1.91 billion.

That last number is especially impressive. No other NFL team comes even close to Dallas’s $1.91 billion; the New England Patriots have the league’s second-most valuable “brand,” at $694 million, but that’s still more than 2.5 times less than the Cowboys’.

The Cowboys’ operating income is also tops in the league, pegged at $564 million; the Rams spend essentially half that, at $286 million.

But they’re still turning an absurd profit. When Forbes first ranked the NFL’s teams by valuation in 1998, Dallas led the pack at $413 million. This year’s $10.1 billion represents a mind-boggling 2,346% increase. Try getting that kind of ROI on absolutely anything else. It’s no wonder private equity firms are scrambling to own even the tiniest crumbs of ownership now being offered by some clubs.

But all of those astronomical dollar figures pale in comparison to the number that’s supposed to mean the most in professional football: five. That’s how many Super Bowl trophies stand in the lobby of the Cowboys’ team headquarters. That total hasn’t changed since 1996.

Until it does, no matter how many digits and commas there are in this year’s bottom line, the word valuation has very little value whatsoever to Cowboys fans, who continue to wait for their team to make the cover of something other than a money magazine.

This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Cowboys become first sports franchise ever to reach $10 billion valuation