NBA franchise value has been a big topic of discussion as of late. After the Los Angeles Clippers sold for about $1.5 billion more than projected, it’s really opened up conversations on just how much some teams could be worth. Obviously the Clippers case is an extreme one because of the circumstances surrounding the sale, but it goes to show that estimated worth projections aren’t necessarily accurate.

A more common example of a franchise being worth more than you’d think would be the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bucks franchise hasn’t done anything worth mentioning since the days of Lewis Alcindor (aka Kareem), but yet they just sold for a whopping $550 million (when projected to be worth around $405 million).

That brings us to the newly rebranded Charlotte Hornets. Michael Jordan of course bought the franchise back in 2010, becoming the first former player to be a majority owner of an NBA team. At the time MJ dropped $275 million to acquire the Bobcats. While that’s certainly a large sum of money, we can now see that the sale price was somewhat of a bargain.

Nowadays, according to a report from the Charlotte Business Journal, the Hornets are projected to be worth at least $600 million and as much as $1.4 billion. That’s right, at least double what MJ paid for the franchise just four years ago.

This rise in value can be attributed to the NBA’s overall success in the past several years, and more recently to the renaming of the franchise back to the Hornets, a much more recognizable brand that has already increased sponsorship and ticket sales.

What will the Hornets be worth in another four years from now? That all depends on what kind of team Jordan puts on the floor.

 

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