The NFL is still weeks from kicking off the 2013 season, but the Dallas Cowboys have already notched one, albeit preseason, title–that of football’s most valuable team.
The honor comes courtesy of Forbes and its latest round of number crunching to determine the have’s and the have-slightly-less’s of the world’s most lucrative sports league. In the 2013 edition out today, the publication anointed the Cowboys the league’s most valuable commodity–weighing in at $2.3 billion. The team’s financial success shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given it’s the 7th year running that the self-proclaimed “America’s team” topped the league’s rich list.
Rounding out the top five are: the New England Patriots, Washington’s NFL team, the New York Giants, and the Houston Texans. To see where your team ranks, here’s the full list.
Forbes points out it’s been a good year for the league as a whole, as the average value of an NFL franchise has grown 5 percent to $1.17 billion.
In contrast, the world’s top 20 soccer teams have a mean value of $968 million. The average worth of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams is $744 million. And average values for the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League, also each with 30 teams, are $509 million and $282 million, respectively.
The only team to lose money last season? The Detroit Lions.
Update: An earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to Washington’s NFL team by a name that, as of late last week, Slate is no longer using. We stumbled over our new rule, and will do our best to avoid doing so again.
