Imagining if the Yankees and Mets were on the New York Stock Exchange

Sports teams are getting incredibly expensive these days with valuations in the billions and revenues nearly reaching such territory. What if they got so big they had to list on public exchanges?

The Subway Series is one of the most iconic rivalries in all of American sports, albeit a lopsided one in many cases. The Yankees, perhaps the most storied team in all of North American sports, have won the World Series 27 times and lost 14 times for a total of 41 visits to the coveted championship series. The Mets, on the other hand, have won 2 out of their 5 World Series berths. It is wild to think that these 2 franchises are less than a 20-minute drive from each other (without NYC traffic). Despite both being in the boroughs, their financial statements tell almost as different a story as their historical records. Without further ado, let’s evaluate both of these sports powerhouses as we would with stocks.

We begin with the Mets, the team with the lower valuation and lower revenues. Over the past decade, the organization has struggled to operate an efficient business. In sports, a good metric for judging the relative cost of a team’s payroll compared to its success during the season is called the win-to-player cost ratio. Essentially, the higher the ratio, the better your general manager was at getting value from lower-paid players. The league average for getting wins compared to players’ salaries is set at 100, and the teams’ scores are calculated based on this mean. For the Mets, the trajectory of this statistic has not been so great. In 2016, it was the highest of the last decade with a score of 145 (45% better than average) as opposed to 72 now (28% below average) according to Forbes.

The Mets have been underwhelming for fans and in general since 2016, there is no doubt about it. In the stated period, they have had a total record of 743-710. Anything above a .500 can be considered decent, until you realize they have only made the playoffs twice in that time. Both times, they did not make it to the World Series, so Mets fans have had nothing to cheer about for quite some time. The same cannot be said about the players. Over 10 years, Mets players will have received well over $2 billion in salaries. All that money and luxury taxes for a lackluster squad that fails to deliver almost every year.

The Mets as a business, somehow, can be viewed as worse than the performance of its main money driver. After 5 straight years of operating profits from 2016-2020, they have failed to turn a profit from 2021-2025. It’s almost as if they took the 7 years of abundance and 7 years of plague from Joseph’s story in the Bible and made it a baseball reference. Unsurprisingly, their best year of operating profit from 2016-2025 was also the 2016 season, when they netted almost $47 million. In 2024, their mounting losses hit a peak at $292 million for the full year before sinking down to $268 million for this year.

The Major League as a whole has had its difficulties in recent years, with the last World Series only garnering 15.8 million viewers. However, the Mets seem to be having struggles that are unique to their franchise. While revenues increased a little over 40% between 2016-2025, payroll almost tripled. Cumulatively, inflation has increased prices by around 34% in that time. Football revenues have exploded, with the Cowboys nearly doubling their revenues in the same period. Meanwhile, the Mets are looking like Six Flags to the Giants’ Disney World. I know Steve Cohen is a famous hedge fund manager, but paying $3.2 billion for this team seems like a financial folly to me.

In a short 20-minute car ride, we head over from Citi Field to Yankee Stadium, probably the most well-known baseball stadium in the world. Although not the original stadium that was home to Murderers’ Row, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and other legends, it is still an impressive sight. Built to hold close to 47,000 people, it is over 10% larger than its rival's capacity of 41,800 people. Forbes also reports revenues per fan of $76, double the $38 earned by the Mets. The numbers speak for themselves; the Yankees are just that much more popular.

The Yankees boast a valuation that is more than 150% higher than their counterparts. At $8.2 billion, they are the most valuable baseball team in the world and one of the top 5 most valuable sports franchises in the world. The Steinbrenners bought them at a purchase price of $8.8 million back in 1973. In their 52 years of stewardship, the valuation has risen around 14% on a compounded annual basis. Compared to an average of 10.7% for the S&P 500, the figure is quite impressive. Turns out being the more loved sibling in America’s biggest market is a recipe for financial success. Or is it?

The Yankees may be more “valuable” than the Mets, but they still have some of their own financial flaws. One of the first things that should be noted is their equally horrendous win-to-player cost ratio of 75. The Yankees, over the past decade, have failed to ever be more efficient at winning relative to their players’ salaries than the league average. The best this figure ever was was 97 in 2019. One could argue that the Yankees could always pay more for better players, so they are justified in this extra investment. Well, the Golden State Warriors had a win-to-player cost ratio of over 100 (over 200 in some cases) 6 times during the last 10 years, and they have 4 rings to show for it, while the Yankees have none.

The Yankees, additionally, have failed to make an operating profit 3 of the last 5 years. Those 2 profitable years yielded a total of $18.1 million, so they fail to cover even this year’s expected loss of $57 million. The Yankees, while not necessarily Boeing, have not fared too hot either compared to what their brand power would suggest. They also do not have rapidly rising revenues to justify the significant increase in valuation. While revenues only jumped 41% since 2016, their valuation has jumped a magnificent 141%. Coupled with the downward trajectory in baseball ratings, the picture isn’t looking so pretty anymore.

The Yankees, in the quest to better the experience of their beloved fans, contributed a little over half of the $2.3 billion employed to build the new stadium 16 years ago. I don’t see them generating the cash to justify that at all. I mean, the Cowboys may not be the best comparison, but they finished their new stadium in the same year. Their operating income this year ($564 million) is only about $100 million less than their contribution to building AT&T Stadium ($675 million). The return on capital is just not there, and even their cross-town rivals managed to spend less building Citi Field ($420 million from the team).

Sports teams have different rules for valuation compared to other businesses. They have virtual monopolies in their home markets, and they have some of the strongest brands money can buy. They can also amortize 100% of their intangible assets (as of now) to pay less taxes than they otherwise would have to. The tax breaks, the clout of owning a team, and the relative stability provided by the teams always seem to make them very attractive acquisitions for billionaires and private equity. Unfortunately, the struggles faced by the Yankees and Mets probably mean they should not be receiving all the love from the financial world as they are right now.