The Age of The Sports Empire
The language of sport still revolves around owners and teams. The underlying businesses increasingly look like holding companies.
A modern sports empire can contain franchises in several leagues, a stadium, surrounding real estate, a media network, hospitality operations and minority interests in adjacent businesses. The team remains the emotional centre. Economically, it can become the anchor tenant of a much larger portfolio.
Six empires, six variations on scale
CNBC’s 2026 ranking valued Kroenke Sports & Entertainment at $26.05bn, making it the world’s most valuable multi-team ownership group. The Jones family followed at $17.60bn, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment at $16.91bn, Fenway Sports Group at $15.37bn and Madison Square Garden Sports at $15.33bn.
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment offers a sixth model. Rogers paid C$4.7bn for Bell’s 37.5% interest in 2025, implying an equity value of roughly C$12.5bn at that transaction price. That figure is not directly comparable with CNBC’s US-dollar enterprise-value estimates: it is a transaction-implied equity value, in Canadian dollars, and may treat debt and non-team assets differently. It is nevertheless useful evidence of the premium attached to a concentrated portfolio of major Toronto properties.
The headline numbers are estimates, not audited market capitalisations. Private franchises do not trade every day. Valuers combine recent transactions, comparable-team multiples, media and venue assets, debt and ownership percentages. The result is best understood as a market-informed estimate of portfolio value, not a cash price available on demand.
The portfolios are not pursuing one strategy
Kroenke’s model is broad and vertically integrated. The Rams, Arsenal, Nuggets and Avalanche sit alongside venues and real-estate interests. Control of the buildings and surrounding land extends the economics beyond matchday: concerts, hospitality, development and year-round footfall become part of the return.
The Jones family is more concentrated around the Dallas Cowboys, but the franchise acts as a platform for a stadium, training complex, sponsorship and commercial operations. The strategy is not diversification for its own sake; it is the extraction of more value from one exceptionally powerful brand.
Harris Blitzer spreads exposure across leagues and ownership structures. Fenway Sports Group combines globally recognised teams with media and commercial interests, linking the Red Sox and Liverpool through a broader sports-and-entertainment platform. MSG Sports is concentrated in two scarce New York franchises — the Knicks and Rangers — proving that an empire can be built through premium density rather than the number of logos.
MLSE is geographically concentrated. The Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC, Argonauts, minor-league teams and Scotiabank Arena share one metropolitan market. That creates cross-selling opportunities across tickets, sponsorship, media and venue utilisation. It is a city strategy rather than a global one.
Why the holding-company model works
Scale lowers the relative cost of functions that do not need to be duplicated. Finance, legal, data infrastructure, sponsorship sales and procurement can serve several assets. A group can negotiate with partners across a larger audience and offer access to multiple sports, seasons and demographic segments.
The portfolio also diversifies sporting risk. One team’s poor season does not determine the performance of the whole group. Events can fill venues outside the core schedule. Real estate can capture value created by the team’s presence. Media assets can turn fan attention into recurring distribution revenue.
There is a flywheel at work. Scarce teams attract fans. Fans make venues and media valuable. Those assets generate cash and data. The group reinvests in the teams, facilities and surrounding district, which can strengthen the original franchises.
Scale creates its own governance problem
A portfolio can be worth more than the sum of its parts. It can also become harder to understand.
Cross-holdings, private valuations and related-party arrangements make comparisons imprecise. Centralisation may reduce cost while weakening local accountability. A club can become one asset among many, even though its supporters experience it as a civic institution.
Concentration also changes bargaining power. A group that controls teams, venues and media can negotiate more effectively with sponsors and cities. The same integration can make markets less contestable and increase the public cost of saying no to stadium or development demands.
The rise of sports empires is therefore not simply a story of wealthy owners collecting trophies. It is a shift in the unit of competition. Increasingly, the most powerful organisation is not the club. It is the platform around it.
RESEARCH NOTE — INTERPRETATION AND ASSUMPTIONS TSL interpretation: The six groups are compared as ownership strategies, not as a perfectly uniform league table. CNBC’s five estimates and the MLSE transaction use different valuation bases. We retain that difference rather than presenting a false precision.
Sources and methodology
• Sports Business Journal — CNBC’s 2026 sports-empire ranking
• CNBC — combined value of the top 20 sports empires