The New York Giants—one of the most valuable sports teams in the world—are seeking new investors, a process that could further test the market on soaring NFL valuations and the league’s newly changed rules on institutional investors.
The team said Thursday night that it had hired Moelis & Co. to explore the “potential sale of a minority, non-controlling stake.” Reps for the team and the bank declined to comment on where the equity would come from, or how much might be sold.
Owned jointly by the Mara and Tisch families, the Giants are worth $7.65 billion, according to Sportico’s most recent numbers. That’s third in the NFL and seventh-most among global sports teams. While minority stakes in the NFL tend to sell at a discount to the control price, anything around that number would be among the highest valuations ever seen for a sports team in a transaction.
That said, stakes at those prices can be hard to sell. As an example, there have been LP stakes in the New York Yankees quietly on the market for at least a decade. The Yankees are worth $7.93 billion, per Sportico’s valuations.
Acutely aware of the fact that valuations were outstripping individual billionaires’ interest in owning passive, minority stakes, NFL owners last year changed its ownership rules to allow institutional funds to buy up to 10% of a franchise. That change followed similar moves by every other major U.S. sports league, and came with a handful of pre-approved groups.
A pair of private equity deals quickly followed. In December, the league approved Ares Management’s investment in the Miami Dolphins and Arctos Partners’ investment into the Buffalo Bills.
The Giants date back to 1925, when the Maras founded the team for $500. The Tisch family joined the ownership group in 1991, buying half the team. The team is a partner with the Jets in the $1.6 billion MetLife Stadium, but it is worth more than their neighbors because of more robust sponsorship and ticket income.
Also possibly occurring in the background: estate planning. As sports teams soar in value, they become more complicated (and more expensive) to hand down to future generations. That becomes exponentially true as ownership passes to the third, fourth, or fifth generations, and the NFL has tighter ownership rules in that regard than any other sports league.
Estate planning is the challenge facing the Chicago Bears in the wake of Virginia McCaskey’s death at age 102 last week, and is the reason the Boston Celtics are currently for sale. John Mara, whose grandfather founded the Giants in 1925, is 70 years old; Steve Tisch is 76.
The average NFL team is now worth $5.93 billion, nearly double the average from 2020 ($3 billion).