According to a recent study by sports business publication Sportico, the Seattle Sounders have been ranked as the 22nd most valuable soccer team in the world, with an estimated valuation of $725 million and revenue of $66 million. This places the Sounders as the fourth most valuable club in MLS, with 18 MLS teams in the top 50 most valuable soccer teams. MLS’s collective valuation is $11.8 billion, making it the third most valuable league in the world.
Sportico explained that the lack of promotion/relegation in MLS helps drive up the valuations of the league’s clubs, as it creates a type of scarcity that’s hard to find elsewhere in the world. The European teams that all show up in the most valuable soccer teams list are “relegation proof” by Sportico’s estimation, which helps explain why the lowest-valued MLS team is $400 million, more than half of the Premier League teams.
To derive the enterprise value of the world’s leading soccer clubs, Sportico calculated each team’s revenue, utilizing publicly available financial statements, Deloitte’s Football Money League publication, and their own estimates in cases where detailed information was not available. Overall, MLS was the only league with 18 teams in the top 50, with the collective valuation of $11.8 billion and nearly as valuable as Spain’s La Liga ($12.3B). The Premier League is by far the most valuable at $27.2B, while Germany’s Bundesliga ($7.3B) and Italy’s Serie A ($6.6B) round out the top 5 most valuable leagues.
