Warriors Lead at $11.3 Billion

Rick Welts started his NBA journey as a Seattle SuperSonics ballboy in 1969 at the age of 16, moving up to serve as their public relations director. He spent 17 years in the league office, helping to launch NBA All-Star Weekend and the “Dream Team” marketing program. Welts led the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors for roughly a decade each, and on Jan. 1, he took over as Dallas Mavericks CEO.

Welts is an NBA lifer, and yet, he has never seen what’s happening right now.

“Never had a moment like this where you could be as optimistic as I am,” Welts said in a video interview. “A lot of people are in this league, from an international perspective, from a media perspective, and I really feel like we have the best ahead of us.”

Investors concur, based on a trio of team sales this year in Boston, Los Angeles and Portland that spanned the sport’s economic tiers and drove values up across the board. The average NBA team is worth $5.51 billion, according to Sportico’s calculations, up 20% versus last year and 113% from 2022, when the average was $2.58 billion. Here is the complete ranking of all 30 NBA teams’ valuations.

The gains are even bigger at the bottom of the financial table. The “get-in” price, or the value of the lowest-ranked team (Memphis Grizzlies), is $4 billion, up 2.5x from 2022 ($1.63 billion). Investors are bidding up the entry price to own 1/30th of an entity with a new $76 billion TV contract and global aspirations, including building new leagues in Africa and Europe.

The Golden State Warriors lead our NBA team valuations for the fifth straight year at $11.33 billion—only the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys ($12.8 billion) rank higher among the most valuable global sports franchises. The Warriors are followed by the Los Angeles Lakers ($10 billion), who moved up ahead of the New York Knicks ($9.85 billion), the Los Angeles Clippers ($6.72 billion) and…