Tampa Bay Rays move up the list in Forbes valuations over last year

Last month, Forbes released its updated valuations for MLB franchises. While the Tampa Bay Rays remain near the bottom they did move up a spot.

The Tampa Bay Rays moved up a spot over last year’s Forbes franchise valuations. Despite the pandemic, every team managed to increase in value except for two.

The Tampa Bay Rays were carried by their new cable television deal that pays an average of around $60 million per year, which is about twice the amount they were receiving. Additionally, Major League Baseball has provided teams with the ability to sell their local streaming rights in order to take aim at the cord-cutting youngsters out there.

The Yankees led the way with a value of $5 billion and an increase in value of nine percent over last year.

The Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, and Giants round out the only teams to exceed $3 billion in value.

The Rays finished last year as the 29th ranked team in terms of total valuation. This year they raised their value by four percent up to $1.05 billion, up from $1.01 billion in 2019.

The Kansas City Royals and the Miami Marlins were the only teams to not gain any value over last year and the Marlins were the only team to lose value, coming in two percent lower than 2019.

In the same article, Forbes projects gate receipts from 2019 at 30.4% of the league’s total revenue. Recent comments from the commissioner’s office had it around 40 percent. Either way, the league stands to lose a significant chunk of revenue in 2020, even with a half-season proposal.

It will be interesting to see if these valuations will be affected next season if the

The Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland A’s played each other in the AL Wild Card game last season and are valued at a total combined value of $2.15 billion or 43% of the Yankees’ valuation.

The combined value of the A’s and Rays is still less than the single value of seven teams (Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, Giants, Mets, and Cardinals).