Sports teams that once sold for a few million now change hands for billions. The price tags look irrational until you see what a franchise actually is.
Media rights are the engine
The real product is not ticket sales — it is live content that audiences watch in real time, ad-skipping be damned. That makes broadcast and streaming rights enormously valuable, and those rights flow to the teams.
Scarcity meets new money
There is a fixed number of major-league franchises and a growing pool of billionaires and funds who want one. Scarcity plus demand pushes prices up, while teams have also become real estate, media, and brand businesses in their own right.
The takeaway
A modern franchise is less a sports club than a media-and-real-estate asset that happens to field a team.
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