Sports Division · Living Reference

NFL Team Valuations 2025

All 32 franchises, ranked. Aggregated from Forbes 2025 with revenue, operating income, and year-over-year change. The Baratelli Institute's plain-English reference for readers who want to understand what pro football is worth as a business.

$13BCowboys (highest)
$7.1BAverage franchise
$5.25BBengals (floor)
25%Average YoY growth
$125.5BMedia deals lock-in (10 years)

The 2025 ranking

Source: Forbes, The NFL's Most Valuable Teams 2025, by Justin Teitelbaum and Brett Knight. Published August 28, 2025; updated November 10, 2025. Forbes original article →

What the Institute adds: a single ranked table with rank change, revenue, and operating income beside each valuation, so a reader can see the whole league in one view. Every number is Forbes'. The Institute's contribution is the aggregation.

What the reader should know: Forbes' figures blend team-level financials with market, stadium, and brand value. They are the most-cited valuations in the sport but they are estimates, not audited disclosures — no NFL team (except the Green Bay Packers) publishes audited financial statements.

# Team State Value YoY Revenue Op. Income
1Dallas CowboysTexas$13.00B+29%$1.234B$629M
2Los Angeles RamsCalifornia$10.50B+38%$764M$244M
3New York GiantsNew Jersey$10.10B+38%$707M$181M
4New England PatriotsMassachusetts$9.00B+22%$762M$222M
5San Francisco 49ersCalifornia$8.60B+26%$723M$115M
6Philadelphia EaglesPennsylvania$8.30B+26%$688M$117M
7Chicago BearsIllinois$8.20B+28%$629M$80M
8New York JetsNew Jersey$8.10B+17%$663M$180M
9Las Vegas RaidersNevada$7.70B+19%$832M$179M
10Washington CommandersMaryland$7.60B+21%$644M$116M
11Miami DolphinsFlorida$7.50B+21%$656M$63M
12Houston TexansTexas$7.40B+21%$687M$156M
13Denver BroncosColorado$6.80B+24%$645M$103M
14Seattle SeahawksWashington$6.70B+23%$624M$143M
15Green Bay PackersWisconsin$6.65B+19%$719M$83M
16Tampa Bay BuccaneersFlorida$6.60B+22%$629M$130M
17Pittsburgh SteelersPennsylvania$6.50B+23%$619M$137M
18Cleveland BrownsOhio$6.40B+24%$685M$90M
19Atlanta FalconsGeorgia$6.35B+22%$612M$37M
20Tennessee TitansTennessee$6.30B+29%$582M$93M
21Minnesota VikingsMinnesota$6.25B+24%$609M$70M
22Kansas City ChiefsMissouri$6.20B+28%$610M$66M
23Baltimore RavensMaryland$6.10B+22%$621M$115M
24Los Angeles ChargersCalifornia$6.00B+18%$593M$105M
25Buffalo BillsNew York$5.95B+42%$585M$104M
26Indianapolis ColtsIndiana$5.90B+23%$593M$109M
27Carolina PanthersNorth Carolina$5.70B+27%$588M$36M
28Jacksonville JaguarsFlorida$5.60B+22%$552M$106M
29Arizona CardinalsArizona$5.50B+28%$571M$62M
30Detroit LionsMichigan$5.40B+30%$585M$21M
31New Orleans SaintsLouisiana$5.30B+20%$607M$115M
32Cincinnati BengalsOhio$5.25B+28%$573M$50M

Team names link to individual Institute team pages, which include ownership, stadium finance, and salary cap detail. Not all team pages are live yet — the Institute is building the set. Cowboys, Packers, Rams, Eagles, Seahawks, Ravens, and Chargers pages are complete; the remaining 25 pages are being built out through 2026.

What the ranking tells you

The Institute's plain-English read of the 2025 Forbes data:

1. The whole league is worth more than $225 billion. Summing the 32 franchise valuations produces an aggregate market value of approximately $228 billion. That is up from roughly $183 billion aggregate in 2024 — a 25% year-over-year increase across the entire league.

2. Every team is now worth at least $5 billion. For the first time in Forbes' annual ranking, no NFL franchise is valued below $5 billion. The floor — the Cincinnati Bengals at $5.25B — is worth more than the top team was worth as recently as 2019 (the 2019 Cowboys were $5.7B). The floor rose faster than the top.

3. The Cowboys are worth more than any sports franchise on Earth. At $13 billion, Dallas is the most valuable sports franchise in the world for the tenth consecutive year (per Forbes' cross-sport ranking).

4. Buffalo's 42% jump is the largest single-year move. The Bills' new stadium — under construction with substantial public financing — is the primary driver of that revaluation. Stadium construction is one of the most repeatable levers for franchise-value uplift in the NFL.

5. Revenue and operating income diverge sharply by team. The Cowboys generate $1.234B in revenue against $629M in operating income — a 51% operating margin. The Detroit Lions generate $585M in revenue against only $21M in operating income — a 3.6% margin. The gap reflects local revenue capture, stadium ownership economics, and payroll capitalization decisions. Teams that own their stadium and have strong local-market economics run materially higher margins than teams that don't.

The Institute's approach to sports valuations

The Baratelli Institute does not produce original NFL franchise valuations. Forbes does that. Sportico does that. Sports Business Journal does that. The Institute's contribution is different: we aggregate the publicly available data across sources, put it in a single reference destination, and add cross-domain context that a reader focused only on sports may not have — how franchise valuations connect to family-office capital structure, how stadium deals interact with municipal bond markets, how media rights economics compare to other sectors, how ownership succession is affecting individual franchises.

Every number on this page traces to a filed or published source. The Forbes 2025 ranking is the primary source. Historical valuations trace to Forbes' annual publications from 2012 forward. Where our per-team pages include salary cap detail, they source from Over The Cap or Spotrac with the reference date noted. Where we discuss ownership, we source from public filings, press disclosures, and the ownership family's own communications. Where we discuss stadium economics, we source from municipal bond issuances, lease agreements filed with local governments, and league-published revenue-sharing formulas.

The reader who wants a specialist's read on any single team should start with the Institute's per-team page, but should also read Over The Cap, Spotrac, and the team's local press coverage. We are a starting point, not an ending point.

Cross-league references

The Institute publishes parallel valuation hubs for the NBA, MLB, and NHL, plus a master 124-team ranking across all four US pro leagues in one destination.

All 4 Leagues · 124 Teams NBA · 30 Teams MLB · 30 Teams NHL · 32 Teams

Related Institute references

Attribution and methodology

Primary source: Forbes 2025 NFL Team Valuations, by Justin Teitelbaum and Brett Knight. First published August 28, 2025; updated November 10, 2025. Forbes original →

Institute contribution: aggregation into a single reference destination, historical trend context, cross-references to case studies, ownership and stadium context.

Corroborating sources for methodology and history: Wikipedia's Forbes list of the most valuable NFL teams (updated November 2025); prior Forbes rankings 2012 onward; NFL revenue-sharing disclosures; individual team press releases.

Refresh cadence: annual, following Forbes' publication. Next update expected August 2026 for the Forbes 2026 ranking.

Editorial disclosure: the Institute has no financial relationship with any NFL franchise, Forbes, Sportico, or any other data source referenced. This page is published as an educational reference for readers interested in the business of professional sports. Not investment advice.