:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/68488586/542425126.jpg.0.jpg)
Forbes released its list of 2020 NHL team values yesterday, and the Bruins made the top five!
Per Forbes, the Bruins are the fifth most valuable team in the NHL, worth a cool billion dollars.
Interestingly (and perhaps troublingly), it appears that the NHL is becoming a league of the haves and the have nots.
From the article (emphasis ours):
The league’s five most valuable teams...accounted for almost a quarter of the league’s revenue. Without them, the league would have lost $50 million.
That’s...not great. The Forbes article also reports that several teams lost tens of millions of dollars last year, including the Florida Panthers (almost $30 million), the Tampa Bay Lightning ($11 million), and the New York Islanders ($39 million).
Forbes also calculated each franchise’s one-year change in value, and nearly every team saw a decrease in value.
All of the top five teams had a 0% one-year change, which isn’t growth, but it also isn’t bad.
Outside of the top five, only the Lightning and the Islanders didn’t have a -% one-year change.
Your top five most valuable NHL franchises:
- New York Rangers - $1.65 billion
- Toronto Maple Leafs - $1.5 billion
- Montreal Canadiens - $1.34 billion
- Chicago Blackhawks - $1.085 billion
- Boston Bruins - $1 billion
The Buffalo Sabres, Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, and Arizona Coyotes round out the bottom four.
Those four teams are only worth slightly more than the Bruins are on their own.
If you’re curious how the NHL compares to the other major American sports leagues, it doesn’t look great for the hockey crowd: the average value of an NFL team, for example, is $3 billion. Yes, average.