Sounders among Top 25 most valuable soccer teams in the world

The Seattle Sounders are among the 25 most valuable soccer teams in the world, according to a study by sports business publication Sportico. The publication estimates that the Sounders are worth about $725 million on revenue of about $66 million, making them the 22nd most valuable team by Sportico’s estimation.

That places the Sounders as the fourth most valuable club in MLS and smack between legendary clubs Club America (Mexico) and Ajax (Netherlands). As a whole, MLS has 18 teams in the Top 50, twice as many as any other league in the world. The league’s collective valuation is $11.8 billion, making it the third most valuable league in the world and nearly as valuable as Spain’s La Liga ($12.3B). England’s Premier League is by far the most valuable at $27.2B, while Germany’s Bundesliga ($7.3B) and Italy’s Serie A ($6.6B) round out the top 5 most valuable leagues. Only three non-MLS teams from the Western Hemisphere made the Top 50 list — America, Chivas ($695M) and Brazil’s Flamengo ($540M).

In explaining their valuation, Sportico said the lack of promotion/relegation in MLS helps drive up the valuations of clubs as it creates a type of scarcity that’s hard to find elsewhere in the world. The European teams that all show up in this list are effectively “relegation proof” by Sportico’s estimation. That helps explain why the lowest-valued MLS team is $400 million, more than half of the Premier League teams.

To derive the enterprise value of the world’s leading soccer clubs, Sportico calculated each team’s revenue, relying on publicly available financial statements, Deloitte’s Football Money League publication, and our own estimates in cases where detailed information was not available. For the Premier League and MLS, we used our previous valuations compiled in January (EPL) and late September (MLS).

The Sounders’ value has some real-world testing, too, as they sold a minority share in 2022 that placed them at $680 million. Either way, that’s a rather significant bump from when Adrian Hanauer, Drew Carey, Joe Roth and Paul Allen paid a reported expansion fee of $30 million in 2007.