BOSTON – The Boston Red Sox may be worth as much as $1.5 billion, according to a report Friday in The Boston Globe.
An ownership group led by John W. Henry bought the Sox in 2002 for $700 million – paying $660 million and taking on $40 million in debt – from the Yawkey family, which had owned the team since Thomas Yawkey bought it in 1933 for $1.2 million.
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Among Henry’s partners was The New York Times Co., which paid $75 million for a 17.8 percent stake in the team’s parent company, New England Sports Ventures. (Times Co. owns The Globe, as well.)
Last month, Times Co. sold a 1.2 percent stake in New England Sports Ventures for more than $14 million – a $9 million profit, The Globe said.
At that valuation, New England Sports Ventures would be worth $1.5 billion. Two years ago, sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, a professor at Smith College, had estimated the team’s value at $1.2 billion.
However, Zimbalist told The Globe: “The fact that someone’s willing to spend $14 million for a trophy doesn’t necessarily mean you could get them to spend $1.5 billion for the whole thing.”
Earlier this month, Forbes magazine valued the Red Sox at $870 million in its annual estimates of Major League Baseball franchises’ financial worth.
That made Boston the second most valuable big-league team, though still far behind the No. 1 New York Yankees, valued at $1.6 billion by Forbes.
The magazine also put the Red Sox’s operating profit in 2009 at $40 million, second-highest in baseball, trailing only the Florida Marlins’ $46.1 million. The Detroit Tigers and Arizona Cardinals were the only two MLB teams that lost money last year, according to Forbes.
In February, Forbes said the Red Sox had the 10th-highest brand value of any sports team in the world, at $157 million. British soccer team Manchester United was first at $270 million, followed by the Yankees at $266 million.
Additional information is available at redsox.com.
