The Dallas Cowboys have been the most valuable team in the world’s richest sports league for 18 straight years, but America’s Team wasn’t the first franchise worth $1 billion, or $2 billion, or even $3 billion. (By Forbes’ calculations, those milestones were first achieved by, in order, the then-Washington Redskins in 2004, Manchester United in 2012 and Real Madrid in 2013.)

If everything really is bigger in Texas, though, Dallas owner Jerry Jones can surely appreciate this: The Cowboys are the first sports team to cross the $10 billion threshold, landing at $10.1 billion on Forbes’ annual list of the NFL’s most valuable teams. That figure represents a 77% increase since 2020—when the Covid-19 pandemic momentarily slowed NFL teams’ growth—and an annualized return of 15%, beating the S&P 500’s 13% in the same four-year period.

The Cowboys may not have won a Super Bowl since 1996, but they now have a $2.5 billion lead on the NFL’s second-most-valuable team, the Los Angeles Rams—and a $7 billion gap ahead of the No. 32 Cincinnati Bengals—thanks to Dallas’ nearly $800 million in local revenue during the 2023 season, including ticket sales, sponsorships, merchandise and other streams specific to the club. No other pro football team even topped $400 million, with the Las Vegas Raiders and the Rams getting the closest, and Dallas’ $564 million in operating income essentially doubled up the second-place Rams’ $286 million.

All NFL franchises are riding high, however, with roughly $380 million in revenue per team coming from the league’s lucrative new national media rights........

© Forbes