How Much Are The Yankees Worth?

How much are the Yankees worth? New York’s baseball team is a sports juggernaut, whose starting line-up has included many of the greatest players of all-time, like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. Since they were established in 1901, they’ve won 27 World Series trophies, which is more championships than any other sports team in North American history. Given all that, we know the team must be worth a pretty penny.

George Steinbrenner turned the Yankees into a financial powerhouse.

Things weren’t always financial grand slam for the ball club. In 1964, the Yankees were purchased by CBS for $11.2 million, which would be about $76 million today. The team went on a multi-year decline and was later purchased by the infamous, recently departed George Steinbrenner, along with a group of other investors, in 1973. He bought the team for $8.7M, which is like $37M in present-day cash.

Steinbrenner made some controversial decisions, like frequently hiring and firing new managers and banning the players from having long sideburns. However, some of his key business decisions led to the championship team to become a financial powerhouse. He created a brand alliance between the Yankees and Adidas in 1997, which was worth $97M. Steinbrenner was the first baseball team owner to sell the cable TV rights to games, and later created the Yankees own cable channel, The YES Network.

Thanks to clever management, Steinbrenner turned an $8.7M team into the $1.6 billion money-maker it is today. The Yankees became the first team ever estimated to be worth over a billion dollars!

The Yankees are known for its all-star players, but we should not forget the contributions of all-star team owner Steinbrenner, one of the sports world’s most ingenious businessman.