Both the Rams and Jaguars are relatively new teams in their markets. The Bills, Raiders, and Browns have all been in their respective cities for decades,and have no trouble selling out their home games. The Rams and Jaguars both have to have really good teams to have any hope of selling out home games on a consistent basis. Even the Lions, as horrendous as they have been in the Super Bowl era, consistently fill their stadium. That makes a difference in franchise valuation.
The fact that they have both been discussed as moving from there current home bases also hurts them from a business aspect and this quiz is not based on winning and losing directly, but mostly on their value in terms of assests and marketability.
you guys realize that they are talking about the brand and not what the team does .. in other words there are lots of raiders browns bills etc fans around.. they are worth more than say the rams or jags.
and.. wow. I think after the point adjustment, I've got 5/5 on this. Might be the first sports quiz I could ever claim that achievement for, not including the small handful I authored myself.
My dad is from Ohio and has been a loyal Browns fan, through good and bad, even though the last couple decades he hasn't really been near as much into pro football as he used to be. First he migrated to college football when my sister went to Florida State, and then he got into baseball again when Washington got their franchise back. But I guess if he had to pick a pro football team he would still go with the Browns. even though they suck.
The Browns have an unbelievable following. You can go to most towns/cities across the states and the almost always have a bar for Browns Backers. Weird, I know. I lived in Manhattan Beach, CA and they had one.
Even as a huge hockey fan, I was shocked to see an NHL team made the list...especially one that hasn't won a cup in nearly 50 years! Says a lot about those die-hard Maple Leaf fans.
A huge market is what makes their valuation so high. I guessed Canadiens, but when it wasn't on there, I figured no NHL team made it. I forgot about the Leafs (easy to do, right?)
I disagree with having Ferrari and McLaren on this. Those aren't sports teams. They're automakers that sponsor people who drive cars in circles. At the least have a note at the top that says "includes racing", or something. As for the other answers, I knew I'd miss some soccer teams (I don't know enough to know which teams are the most valuable), and I missed the Dodgers, Bulls, and Phillies. I'm surprised the Rangers and the Canadiens weren't on here. I thought the Rangers were in the 800 million range.
They're definitely sports and definitely teams, so they fit the definition. BTW Grand Prix drivers don't just go around in circles; that's NASCAR and it's a sport too (prerequisites being reflexes, timing, coordination, endurance etc)
if the IOC doesn't recognize nascar as a sport then i don't think it should be classed as a sport, this being said, i love watching nascar and have nothing but respect for the drivers because it does take an insane amount of talent to drive like they do.
Curiously enough, the IOC does recognise automobile racing as a sport now. (I only learned this because I wasn't sure whether they recognised American football as a sport. they do.)
Ok, I'm not sure when this was done, but you say "updated for 2013", well as of Nov 25 2013, the New York Rangers were valued at 850 million. http://www.forbes.com/nhl-valuations/
The Buffalo Bills just sold for $1.1 billion and Forbes actually valued them at $935 mil right around the time of the sale. Would be cool to see what else has changed...
Endurance, reflexes, extremely high levels of motor (as in body movement) skill perfected over years of practice... not to mention in some races the driver's being a few pounds overweight could cost them a race so they have to be as fit and weight conscious as Olympic wrestlers. These guys aren't going out for a Sunday drive with the cruise control on. Why don't *you* try driving an extremely temperamental precision-tuned 1,000 horsepower machine at 180 mph for 500 miles without stopping?
The vehicle is just a tool. Like a baseball bat. Diminishing the skill of the person using that tool would sort of be like saying, "why did people think Babe Ruth was so great? It was the bat that made all those balls fly out of the park. He was just holding it and swinging it forward." This is very much the same as trying to say professional drivers don't need any skill because all they're doing is sitting in a car and turning left. Go for a ride with one of those guys around a track sometime, see what they can do up close and how effortlessly they can do it... or, try what I said above and see how incredibly hard and grueling it is. You'll get a new appreciation.
Much as I admire the drivers of these fast vehicles I think the main factor in being the best is the car itself. Almost any of the top 20 drivers would win if they had the same cars as the leaders. It would only be a true sport if all the drivers had the same vehicle. Most races the pole position (great advantage) and the lap times are only differing by 0.25 of a second and the best cars give this advantage.
Maybe so but then you could argue that minor differences in equipment (even the friction coefficient of a swimmer's Speedos) can be the difference between victory and failure. And even if you are 100% correct and what determines the winner in auto racing is the machine and not the driver, it's still true that every one of the drivers on the track is amazing at what they do and I think they qualify as athletes.
While it's true in any sport that it's important to use the most effective equipment, in almost all other sports all competitors have the opportunity to choose what they consider to be the most effective equipment. In tennis, if one manufacturer had a clearly better racquet than all the others, everyone would start using that racquet and tournaments would still be about who plays the best. IMO F1, although (or perhaps because) the competitors are all amazing drivers, is not primarily a test of who's the best driver, any more than a horse race is primarily a test of who's the best jockey.
eh... I might be ignorant here but I feel like F1 drivers have a LOT more control over the outcome of a race than a jockey. In some places they have replaced the jockeys with robots. They are little more than ballast. The jockey's chief role is to be as tiny and underweight as possible, and then hang on. I think. Maybe there's more to it than that.
I'm American and I got Manchester United and City. Woo hoo! Two soccer/football teams committed to memory and so many more to go. But I'm trying, world.
The only soccer teams that show up on this list are really big internationally famous ones with large followings outside of their respective countries. I don't watch football at all and I got all of them on the first go except for Munich, I think.
Almost certainly San Antonio (with a username of punkybrewster). NBA Spurs have won 5 championships since they drafted Tim Duncan, now retired but they are still winning.
Once I ran out of Premier League clubs and had entered Real, Barcelona and Bayern, I just started typing in random words that sounded like the kinda things Americans would name a sports team. This proved a surprisingly fruitful technique.
I'm very surprised (like, the most surprised I've ever been by a Jetpunk quiz) that Cleveland Cavaliers isn't on the list. I'm not american and I don't watch the NBA, but haven't they been in about 4 finals since year 2010?
I tried Cavs, then Cavaliers full expecting them to be on the list. But looking them up, they have a value of 1.2B and the bottom of the list is 1.75B. But in 2010 they were only worth 250 million - their value is climbing quickly now that they are making it to the finals.
Name all of the NFL teams, all of the MLB and NBA teams in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and the most popular soccer (football) teams in the world and you'll get almost all of them.
I'm so dubious of anything that sites Forbes as source. I can't wrap my head around the "fact" that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are more valuable than global soccer teams like PSG or Juventus.
It's simply a function of the NFL being so valuable as a league. (Though clearly not enough to guarantee contracts or actually do serious research on CTE.) Cost has nothing to do with overall quality off a team.
I kind of agree with @martay. It's hard to see how the L.A. Rams can be worth $3 billion with the tiny fan base they currently have. But then again, sports teams are worth as much as someone is willing to pay. The value of a sports team is less a reflection of the underlying economics and more about the desire of billionaires to own a sports team.
Yeah, another who is surprised by some of the teams on the list. I'm not convinced that 'all' those American sports teams are worth more than the vast majority of the big European football sides (thos enot on the list), but I guess it depends how you choose to measure it.
I'm also very surpirsed to see Arsenal on the list ahead of Liverpool. I would have thought the latter had a much bigger global fan base. Maybe the value aspect includes stadium capacity and thus ability to earn income from match receipts.
Ohh and as a Brit, I need way more time for this quiz. My knowledge of US sports teams is probably only slightly better than the average American sportfan's knowledge of European football teams. The answers come to me, but slowly.
Well the Rams were great last season and are currently great again. They play in a huge market, and will have partial ownership rights to a brand new stadium that is currently being built in a planned community. Plus the ownership stake comes with a percentage of shared profits from the world's most profitable sports league, so...the fact that the Rams don't have a ton of fans *right now* (although knowing people from LA, the number of fans is doubling daily with the Rams' winning record) doesn't factor into the math too much.
The fans were already with their senses. And so were 90% of all Native Americans polled who saw no problem with the team name, which is not and never was a slur. Of those 90% most either liked the team name and logo, or just didn't give a crap.
However, what did eventually happen is that the team owners decided that they could make more money trying to appear woke and racially conscious by giving in to the demands of a vocal, misguided minority. And so they did.
Not sure how I missed Barcelona -- I guessed Forca Barcelona, Forca Barca, Barcelona FC... Every possible combo but the right one. Or I was spelling something wrong. Frustrating either way!
Ugh so many made up sounding American teams. Surprised there’s that much money in the cringe inducing, boring and life sapping things that they claim to be sports. Suppose selling weak beer and repeatedly having fans shout DEFENCE makes lots of money.
"So many made up sounding"? Pretty much every American team name up there is a real word thing. And if these are all "cringe inducing, boring and life sapping", what sports aren't to you? Give me a break!
Be nice. Not every sporting event can be as exiting as a week long cricket test match during which most of the fans in attendance are napping and none are really sure what's going on. Or a scintillating game of the foosball that ends in a 0 - 0 tie after being interrupted every 15 minutes by some "athlete" falling to the ground nursing his knee like an infant trying to get ice cream when someone on the opposing team brushed up next to him. And yes team chants are so much more boring than getting crushed to death against a chain link fence by a bunch of soccer hooligans, granted, but some of us have lives to go back to after the sporting event is over.
I'm also very surpirsed to see Arsenal on the list ahead of Liverpool. I would have thought the latter had a much bigger global fan base. Maybe the value aspect includes stadium capacity and thus ability to earn income from match receipts.
However, what did eventually happen is that the team owners decided that they could make more money trying to appear woke and racially conscious by giving in to the demands of a vocal, misguided minority. And so they did.