Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones believes that if he chose to sell the Dallas Cowboys, he would be able to get more than $10 billion for the NFL team.
The 79-year-old Jones spoke with football writer Peter King last Friday and made his claim, though he quickly added that he has no plans to sell the franchise known as “America’s Team.”
The hypothetical price tag placed on the Cowboys comes when the Denver Broncos are on the verge of being sold for a reported $4.5 billion.
That amount is nearly double the 2018 purchase price of the last NFL team that was sold, the Carolina Panthers. In 2018 the Panthers franchise was purchased for a reported $2.275 billion. The last NFL team to be sold for under $1 billion was the Jacksonville Jaguars, purchased for $700 million in 2012.
When Jones purchased the Cowboys and the since-demolished Texas Stadium in 1989 for $150 million, the team was losing approximately $1 million a month. Within a decade, the Cowboys won three Super Bowls, and Jones resolved the team’s financial problems.
Since that early success on the field under Jones’ ownership, the Cowboys have been unable even to reach the conference championship game and have made numerous head coaching changes. That turnover is in stark contrast to the first 29 years of the franchise when it had only one head coach, Pro Football Hall of Famer Tom Landry.
Despite those struggles on the field, the Cowboys remain near the top when it comes to brands within the NFL. Forbes ranks the Cowboys as the world’s most valuable sports franchise at $5.7 billion. Yet Jones appears adamant about never selling the Cowboys.
That popularity has resulted in lucrative sponsorships for the team, including partnerships with worldwide companies such as Pepsi, Bank of American, and Molson Coors.
In the case of the latter business, the Cowboys and Molson Coors agreed to a 10-year contract extension last September that will pay the team $20 million per year.
The ability to obtain that amount caught the attention of Jonathan Jensen, a former executive with sports marketing agencies in global advertising networks Omnicom and Publicis Groupe.
“The fact that the Cowboys could put together a local team sponsorship of $20 million a year is pretty astounding and speaks to the power of the Cowboys brand in North Texas,” Jensen told The Dallas Morning News.
The Cowboys have played at AT&T Stadium since the 2009 season and receive naming rights fees from the communications giant. In addition, they also receive income from the more than 300 suites within the stadium.
All NFL teams share the massive annual broadcasting rights fees expected to total over $100 billion per year starting next season. That amount is already increasing for the 2022 season with the addition of Amazon Prime’s streaming service that will broadcast the weekly Thursday night games.
That amount of money being offered to all NFL teams helps explain why Jones is so confident that he would be able to obtain $10 billion for the Cowboys. If he were ever to sell the team, there would likely be multiple bids offered, which would undoubtedly drive up the final selling price.