Forbes list ranks Portland’s men’s soccer team as the fourth-most valuable in the league.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Forbes list ranks the Portland’s men’s soccer team as the fourth-most valuable in Major League Soccer in 2014.
The Timbers dropped a spot from the 2013 ranking.
The publication says the team had a value of $185 million with an operating income of $4 million. In 2013, Portland was valued at $141 million with an operating income of $9.4 million.
The rankings reflect increasing revenues for the entire league.
We painted a rosy picture in those 2013 valuations, in which the average team was worth $103 million, nearly triple what the typical MLS team was worth five years previously. Yet detractors could still point to some disconcerting signs. The league was on a set of TV deals with ESPN, NBC and Univision that paid just $30 million per year on average. And in 2014 MLS bought back and eventually folded Chivas USA, marking the first time an MLS franchise had gone under in more than a decade.
Yet both potential dilemmas were quickly overcome. Even our bullish predictions that then-ongoing TV contract negotiations would result in the league’s rights fee more than doubling came up short: The league is now in the first season of its new eight-year deals with Fox, ESPN and Univision, which pay a combined $90 million per year on average, triple the old payout.
(SOURCE: Forbes)
The top-10 MLS teams in value:
- Seattle Sounders
- LA Galaxy
- Houston Dynamo
- Portland Timbers
- Toronto FC
- Sporting Kansas City
- Chicago Fire
- New England Revolution
- FC Dallas
- San Jose Earthquakes
Note that only eight teams had a net-positive operating income.
