Photo Paul Rudderow

The website Sportico: The business of sport a few weeks ago published its 2025 valuations of the 50 most valuable soccer clubs in the world. (Click here for the original article, including partial explanations how the valuations were reached.) Real Madrid is rated most valuable ($6.53 billion) with Crystal Palace rated 50^th($610 million). The top 15 richest teams are all in Europe. But MLS landed 19 clubs in Sportico’s top 50, followed by the English Premier League with 14.

We assume Sportico likes MLS’s overall business strategy restricting high-risk financing. How they express that judgment concretely in their data we have no idea.

Sportico’s valuations include real estate and related businesses. For example, Philadelphia’s WSFS Sportsplex is almost certainly included. So is Union Yards where principal owner Jay Sugarman’s photo was taken. Whether ownership’s non-soccer assets may be included to some degree is unknown.

Below we list those 19 MLS clubs ranked as Sportico ranks them. We add their places in the overall ranking of the top 50. Sportico says it used its previous MLS valuations published January 29^th, 2025. Accessing that data directly requires a subscription.

Since the chart compares clubs that use a spring-summer-fall calendars to fall-winter-spring ones, the revenue comparison subheading covers both.

For interest we add below a ranking of the 19 MLS clubs by Sportico’s 2024 revenue estimates.

The 11 MLS clubs for which we do not have specific revenue data are given in alphabetical order. Please do not assume their revenues are less than the Sportico numbers given above, for example, San Diego’s and Vancouver’s are probably fairly healthy.

Philadelphia

 That Philadelphia is ranked the 40^th-most valuable soccer club in the world may surprise its fans. Its waterfront real estate holdings are part of the valuation. The valuation includes an assessment of potential future value in addition to actual current ones. Sportico does not detail concretely how it generated its numbers.

Philadelphia has the fourth-lowest revenue of the MLS clubs listed at $67 million.

We assume Sportico likes Philadelphia’s long-term business plan that emphasizes player development, including through its academy, and its avoidance of overpaying aging big name veterans such as — gulp –Daniel Gazdag.

A cautionary postscript

During the 19^th century on Wall Street speculative valuation of future potential was referred to as “watering the stock,” for example when valuing shares in proposed railroads yet to be built. We cannot judge how much “water” there is in Sportico’s valuations of MLS teams. In Philadelphia’s case we have no idea how they value the Union’s long-term business model, for example.