Goldman Sachs: Even the Superrich Can No Longer Buy Pro Sports Teams

Private equity deals in sports jumped from 50 in 2018 to 192 in 2025, and Goldman Sachs says that flood of institutional money has priced high-net-worth individuals out of controlling team ownership. The assessment comes from Nicole Pullen Ross, head of Goldman Sachs' Private Wealth Management Sports & Entertainment Solutions, in the bank's second sports investing report, Playing for Scale, the follow-up to 2024's Getting in the Game.

"Gone are the days when a single family might have a passion project and buy a team for a few hundred million," Pullen Ross told Fortune. Only "a very short list" of the world's wealthiest people could afford to invest in or purchase a team outright, she added.

How much does a team cost now?

The numbers explain the squeeze. Arctos Partners bought 8% of the Los Angeles Chargers, and the team's valuation rose from $5.8 billion to $8.6 billion the following year, the report said. The Philadelphia Eagles recently sold 8% at an $8.3 billion valuation — a stake worth roughly $664 million before any control premium.

Pullen Ross said valuations sit at "pretty extraordinary levels," with institutional capital "stepping into that gap in a meaningful way." She counts 74 North American teams with private equity or institutional capital in their ownership ranks. The NFL, the last major U.S. league to admit such funds, opened to them in 2024.

The takeaway is simple: team ownership has become an asset class for institutions, not a trophy for families.

What rules do the funds face?

Access comes with strict terms. The NFL requires funds to buy at least 3% of a team, hold it for six years, and carry $2 billion in capital, with no more than 20% of that capital in any one team. Even so, supply is scarce. One institutional investor quoted in the report said NFL demand is "considerably higher than available supply," and the report expects the league to expand its roster of approved investors before admitting new firms.

Minority stakes are the remaining door for wealthy individuals. Controlling NFL owners are selling stakes to funds and to "traditional high-net-worth individuals," the report said. Such sales could narrow the historical discount on secondhand limited partner stakes, which the report puts at 10% to 40%.

Pullen Ross said institutional money "gives some investors a better sense that the growth will be professionally managed" and makes an eventual exit more likely. That is a promise of discipline; the report offers no performance data proving institutional owners outperform family owners.

Where does Goldman's own interest sit?

The bank is not a neutral observer. Most investors, Pullen Ross said, will need "a variety of approaches to exposure," including institutional capital and "creative financing" from Goldman's private bank. The report describes two illustrative loans the bank structured for team owners: one secured by liquid assets and real estate equity, with indirect reliance on team value; the other secured partly by a stake in a private equity management company, with a negative pledge on the owner's team stake.

The disclosures are notable. Goldman's advisors, the report says, will not introduce clients to lenders not affiliated with Goldman, and may receive internal recognition for lending referrals, which may factor into compensation. The report was written for the bank's private wealth clients — the same clients who could take out those loans.

Will media rights keep the valuations up?

The valuation case leans heavily on media rights, which the report projects at $66.4 billion in 2026, inflated by World Cup spending, before falling to $64.1 billion in 2027. Pullen Ross called the decline "contractually baked in in some ways" and described 2028 as effectively flat. Media rights rose 41% from 2020 to 2025, and streaming platforms now hold about 20% of the market, up from 8% in 2021.

The projections therefore hinge on contract renewal timing as much as on fan demand. Pullen Ross argued live events remain hard to replace because advertisers reach audiences in real time and fans "find common ground" in a crowd. Extending the comparison to Disney, she said teams aim to make fans feel "special and seen and engaged" — a parallel she called "an aspirational objective," not a current one.

On whether younger fans will keep paying, the report cites a "fragmented media landscape" and an "increasingly short attention span," with short-form social content now the primary channel to younger audiences. Owners are responding with athlete documentaries, 365-day content calendars, low-cost standing-room tickets, and subscription virtual reality access. Asked directly whether young people like sports less, Pullen Ross offered tactics, not engagement data. "Baseball's been trying to figure this out for quite some time," she said.

What about women's sports and college deals?

Women's sports shows the same institutional pattern, only earlier. The global market is projected to reach $3.04 billion in 2026, up from $0.69 billion in 2022, with the WNBA and NWSL generating nearly two-thirds of it. The average WNBA team is valued at $414 million, up 52% in a year; the average NWSL team at $200 million, up 49%. The WNBA's new media deal averages $200 million a year, four times its predecessor. The Golden State Valkyries generated more than $78 million in revenue in their 2025 inaugural season, surpassing more than half of MLS franchises.

Pullen Ross said women's teams lacked "the same level of professionalism" as men's sides and often began as family passion projects. The report says active investors have "routinely passed on opportunities" where operating plans were inadequately structured; one WNBA owner described a shift to "disciplined capital allocation." Commercial sponsorship fell from 64% of women's sports revenue in 2022 to 45% in 2026, while matchday revenue rose from 11% to 30%.

Barriers remain. No WNBA team owns its arena, and the report calls building one a decade-or-longer project likely requiring public-private partnerships. The Atlanta Dream's planned move from a 3,500-seat venue to the Hawks' roughly 17,000-seat arena illustrates the scale problem. More than 50 WNBA games have drawn a million viewers, Pullen Ross said, while top men's games reach about 20 million. "It's a pretty big gap to try to fill over time," she said.

The next frontier is college sports. After the NCAA's 2025 settlement agreeing to pay $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes, athletic departments are turning to outside capital: Otro Capital put $500 million into Crimson Brand Partners, a new commercial entity at the University of Utah. The report expects such structures to proliferate — and, notably, to give high-net-worth individuals a way back in as limited partners.