The 10 richest sports franchise owners in America

Despite subpar performance on the field, the Dallas Cowboys continue to ensure that their owner Jerry Jones remains a very rich 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, according to Sportbusiness magazine, became the first NFL team valued at more than $10 billion. Sport.

Despite the record sum, 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 would accept no less than $10 billion,” Jones said in 2018. “But I'm not suggesting that I would take $10 billion for them. The Cowboys are simply not for sale. They are a long-term asset and my immediate family – who helped make them what they are today – will own the Cowboys long after I'm gone.”

By deciding to hold on to the Cowboys despite the fact that their list price keeps rising, Jones appears to have made a very forward-thinking decision. The value of sports teams has increased dramatically over the past three decades – experts attribute this to several factors, particularly the rising value of media rights packages.

“The idea that [pro sports] is a loss-making business, was still present in people's minds in the 1990s,” said Victor Matheson, economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross The Wrestler in 2022. “'How do you 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; the value of 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 its teams' average value increase by 1,112% between 1996 and 2021, according to Sport.

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

“Every time I thought we had reached 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, there will be people who have the money and the wherewithal to buy these teams.”

Read on to learn about the 10 richest owners of American sports franchises.