Obviously it depends on country, division, and the actual team. But I was wondering if anyone knew what any soccer teams are valued at. From Venezuelan 3rd division to Serie A and La Liga. Just curious.
Anywhere from $0 to $1.5 billion, depending on what level. You can start a club here in the US at the amatuer level and grow it into a semi-pro team to a PDL team or A-League team if you are ambitious enough. Or if you have the money and ambition, I'm sure you can purchase a struggling Serie D club or amatuer club in Italy and with the right investments and management, move up the ladder.... The problem is, soccer is not a good business, many owners of soccer teams own the teams not to make money, but as a source of fun and pride. They usually make their money from other ventures and use their soccer team as a "White elephant" tax write-off or something....It is very hard to profit off of a soccer team.
Well it usually seems when a team is being sold it usually has to do with it being in financial shambles so the price for one of those team is much less than one would think. Just for fun one could quite possibly come out with a rough idea with some theory and some sleuthing how much a team is worth. Researching all their assests, liabilities and owner's equity one could make a good bid that wouldn't get thrown back at one's face. Stadium -leased or owned (A) Players (As) Players-total salary of all players, avg salary of league player (Li) Coaches-total salary (Li) Front Office/ Manag salary(Li) Transportations Bus/Jet (As) Training Facilites (As) (Merch.) (A) shouldn't figure too heavily for small clubs A whole bunch of other stuff. They overvalue/undervalue companies all the time so what's the difference. That's how they get into this mess in the first place. More than anything else the board would probably be more interested what type of cash one could be able to pour into the club before they hand over the keys. If Port Vale was seriously looking at 800,000 POUND bids a few years ago and Latin America first division are sold for a couple million that ought to give you an general idea.
I seem to recall somewhere that the franchise fees for the recent MLS expansion were around $10 million plus you had to have evidence that you had the means to develop a stadium.
Bohemians Prague, traditionally a Czech top division team who are currently bottom of Div 2, were sold for 1Kc last week - $0.03 . The new owner did also have to pay off debts of nearly $300,000 though. Because very few clubs are bought as a business proposition, owners tend to only sell when they really have no choice. That tends to mean that clubs are overvalued to the extent of being nearly impossible to buy much of the time, or heavily in debt and a bad proposition at other times. Also as clubs are mainly privately owned, the sales of the clubs also remains private, and true details are not always known.
One of my new goals in life is to make enough money to own a MLS team one day. I think I'd hire Magpie to run the administration side of things; he knows a helluva lot about soccer, but would know how to run a fan-friendly organization. If he wanted...
Lazio was bought for about 30 million by their current club owner. But they were in desperate need of money and had serious debts. A Serie D club, IMO, would go for maybe in the range of $10,000-450,000. There are even semi-pro sides under Serie D that would go for even cheaper.