Report: Toronto FC ranked 24th most valuable football club in the world
According to Sportico, Toronto FC is the 24th most valuable football club in the world with a current valuation of $705 million.
The report has the Reds sitting one place behind Dutch giants Ajax ($710 million USD) and one ahead of fellow MLS side D.C. United ($700 million).
Among all other MLS clubs, TFC finds itself behind four other teams: the Seattle Sounders in 22nd ($725 million), Atlanta United in 18th ($855 million), the LA Galaxy in 17th ($865 million), and LAFC in 16th ($900 million).
Overall, there were a total of 18 MLS clubs in the top 50, with a combined valuation of $11.8 billion. In fact, MLS had more representatives in the top 50 than any other league in the world.
Sportico is also reporting that Toronto made $64 million in 2022, a figure that is $28 million higher than the club’s total revenue in 2021. The end of Ontario’s COVID-19 restrictions, as well as the addition of several marquee signings, including Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi, has not only seen the mass return of the TFC faithful to BMO Field, but also the general public.
With regards to the club’s $705 million valuation, it must be said once again that owners MLSE paid just $10 million as an expansion fee for the MLS club before TFC’s inaugural season in 2007. To put that into perspective, Charlotte FC paid a whopping $325 million expansion fee to kick off in 2022.
As is common knowledge to fans in Toronto, the club is operated by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the company which also operates the Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL, the Toronto Raptors in the NBA, and the Toronto Argonauts in the CFL.
Other TFC corporate partners include Adidas, Coca-Cola, and Mastercard.
I’m not really surprised. Toronto is a big city with a lot of market potential which is only really being accessed at the margins right now. Ie TFC has a lot of potential upside as a club when it comes to accessible fans. It’s also run by mlse which is a multi billion dollar marketing machine, and while it’s been a shit show on field, it’s been rather successful commercially. I think it’s worth noting though that something is only ever worth what others are willing to pay for it, and realistically, from a business perspective, if you said to me ‘here’s two clubs, buy one’ and one was Ajax and one was TFC, both similarly priced, if I weren’t a TFC fan I’d say that Ajax was the better investment. The only reason I’m not 100% sure about that view is that Ajax has no real growth potential; it’s already fully penetrated its potential market share imo. But it’s a much better run club with far greater history and culture. If MLS would reform or loosen its stupid roster rules and salary cap, I’d say TFC would be the much better investment because it would no longer be limited to Columbus’ market cap via the league’s inane obsession with ‘parity’ and clubs like TFC, LA, NY etc could really grow into great clubs.
Pretty accurate perspective but I will say it stumbles as it ends.
Remove the salary cap and I’m not sure MLSE has the vision to be a “great club” as long as profit is lord. They have proven they can outspend others but it’s was a fortunate combination of circumstances that lead to past glory. If that had been planning we’d see a pattern like the few great clubs already in MLS.
The questions being asked should be, why are they not paying for their own stadium? Why do they not have a women’s team in the structure? Should the public expect a business with this valuation to be a follower, using public funds, or a leader showing new ideas?
The cluster of billion dollar sports teams owned by MLSE means there is no massive ego leading any one to great things. There is no master technical visionary pulling strings for any one of the teams; egos are fed by dollars not wins. MLSE actually has too much money, they are not having to make hard team decisions because they just keep making money for the decision makers.
I get what you mean about there being no single leader or vision beyond profitability, but it’s hard to argue that removing the club’s spending limits (or at least increasing them to match a percentage of revenue) would not lead to increased spending to improve on field quality and therefore fan engagement. Also, they’d probably be more willing to invest in big names for marketing reasons.
As to why there’s no women’s team? That’s pretty clear imo. Women’s sports are largely not profitable. In fact most men’s soccer clubs in the world lose money, and it’s far worse in that sense in the women’s game. The only reasons to do it from a business standpoint would be 1) as a marketing campaign for the club to improve its standing amongst fans who would care about that (a small subset) and 2) as a tax write off for the losses such an endeavour would surely generate. But both of those things are situational and may not be sensible in many cases.
Be careful with quick dismissal of women’s teams and profitability. The most watched game in football is now a women’s match.
We can’t look at men’s leagues and say “duplicate that”, it doesn’t work anymore than MLS looking at PL and saying duplicate that. There is an appetite for pro women’s sport and if there is no outlet we can’t say they aren’t profitable. Was Wrexham profitable before it was bought by celebrity owners?
And, my point here is that MLSE doesn’t need a team to be “profitable” on its own, as seen by TFC, to explode in value. If MLSE was concerned with football, winning, being a big player – a women’s team and proper academy would be central.
I’m not sure which game you’re referring to, but I have a hard time believing that the most watched game in the world is a women’s game. I’d double check that. In any case, I’m not against them forming a women’s team. In fact if I were in charge, I would do it. Most of the top clubs have women’s teams if for no other reason than the fact that the risk/reward is weighted towards reward. Even if there’s a 5% chance it succeeds, the investment is modest by their standards. And there are non financial benefits. But the expectations need to be realistic.
LONDON, July 31 ‘22 (Reuters) – A record crowd of 87,192 were in attendance at Wembley Stadium for the Women’s European Championship final between England and Germany, beating the highest total recorded in either the men’s or women’s editions of the tournament.
Euro’s being the biggest stadium draw in league football.
So, just to clarify, there was a very well attended match. That doesn’t mean it was ‘the most watched’ match ever. That’d be every men’s WC final which draws roughly half of the world’s population to watch on tv. I’m sorry, but there’s a reason that fifa is struggling to sell the rights to the women’s WC. It’s not because it’s popular.
My comment was in discussion about the viability and draw of the women’s game. I pointed out more tickets bought for a women’s match than an equal status men’s (Euro’s). This goes directly to “popularity and demand” being demonstrated.
I’m not wanting to argue, I’m not saying more people watch women play games than men. I’m saying don’t state that “women’s teams are only good for a tax write off”. People can run teams without a loss in any league.
I’d love to carry this on, but the thread is getting too narrow! 😂
Truthfully at this point in time, the Women’s teams in Europe do not generate anywhere the revenue that the men’s teams do.
For context, at the recent womens world hockey championships in Brampton tickets for going for a huge price. But even then that does not equate to a professional women’s hockey league flying.
Sure MLSE could support a women’s team, but then you have to ask how would their shareholders like to have their investment dollars spent? i.e. On a women’s soccer league that just isn’t there right now versus the still growing men’s league, NBA and continual brand growth in the NHL. Its all about maximizing shareholder value at the end of the day. I don’t have to like it as a fan, but businesses are in business to make money and that is the bottom line. Very few owners are willing to do something good for the game or for people (and in most cases those are individual owned teams, not something owned by multiple investors or corporations).
The salary cap is an interesting dilemma for MLS. It was certainly needed in the early days for the viability of the league in small markets.
With the success of MLS and new teams with large wallets joining over the past few years, there are probably enough “large” teams to have a non-salary cap league but there would likely be a number of teams that would not be able to make that jump in spending. Founding teams in the league likely lost at this point.
I think inevitably if MLS is going to be a top tier league the cap and other weird financial rules have to go. The question is does MLS aspire to be a top tier league and if so when do they make that move? Just speculating but if the Apple TV deal is successful in growing the league world-wide that might be a trigger for removing the cap.
Agreed. If they’re serious about getting global viewership, they’ll absolutely need to at least loosen these rules. While I prefer no cap, I think a good compromise to ensure financial viability would be a flexible cap determined by each club’s revenue. Ie Toronto could spend more than Columbus but not more than x percent of its revenue.
Be careful what yo wish for guys , the rise in player salaries is what killed off the old NASL.
That was a different era. Not only is soccer much more popular in NA than it was before, but the business of soccer itself has changed. It’s now more about jersey sales and TV deals than stadium attendance for big clubs. In any case, it’s not an either-or choice as I’ve suggested; mls could have a per club flexible salary cap based on revenue so as to ensure viable spending levels. We don’t need a one size fits all cap at all.
I would like to see just a higher overall salary cap with no TAM/GAM rules. Hopefully this allows the base salaries to come up to 6 figure territory while allowing a more balanced roster build throughout the league. Because you need to compete with the rest of the world, keeping a 3 DP rule makes sense with each DP costing more than the last towards the cap. Teams should be allowed flexibility with signing players through their academy systems sort of like it currently is, forcing teams to have to invest in their academies to help promote local talent to fill out rosters. Selling players does not add to teams salary caps in any way, and the teams can use that money for profit or reinvestment into the academy instead. While we’re at it, let’s just make it so all Canadian and American players do not take up any international spots no matter what team in the MLS they play for.
But when you can’t watch the club on the television unless you pay Apple a subscription fee it doesn’t say much about attracting new viewers.
It’s a proper WTR thread in the new digs.
Cannot help but shed a tear.
We enjoying the new clubhouse?
Overall I’m very glad the site is back up and running. The new formats are taking a bit of getting used to but that’s likely a “ me” issue.
Not sure it can be done, but one feature that would be appreciated is the ability to leave us logged in rather than having to enter the name and email each time. I click the save my name etc box but it doesn’t seem to work session to session but will auto fill if I make multiple comments at once.
What you are saying is similar to the Financial Fair Play model used in Europe.
But when MLS has more teams in the top 50 then any other league it does speak of how effective the cap has been in growing the league. Perhaps the next step is 5 DP rule and increasing the cap to $10M (also increasing GAM) along with the cap floor so cheap teams are forced to spend more (you could do this for 3-5 yrs) while increasing the cap by 20%/year especially going into the world cup.
Ultimately your goal is to increase cap space to the point where you don’t need a cap anymore but you have moved a majority of the teams up as well. Then in 10 yrs you can go cap free and possibly even look at a promotion system with MLS Next Pro or something similar.
If you watch the documentary (highly recommended) on the rise and fall of NASL it touches on something that didn’t work (Also can be seen as one of the many reasons it failed)
Since soccer isn’t the biggest sport in usa and Canada. All teams have to be able to compete almost equally for a championship or the league won’t work…the NASL had a couple of franchise new york and LA come to mind that had way way deeper pockets than the other teams and therefore other teams didn’t draw anything over time and most of the league started to bleed money..when the MLS was formed they were mindful of this and therfore gentleman like the late Mr.payne crafted the salary cap and structure to GAM and TAM and DP we see today it was an effort to not make the same mistakes that the NASL did. Now is it outdated of course but does the MLS need some sort of salary cap to not let teams like Columbus San Jose and Kansas city bleed I think it does.
What Documentary?
And if it’s behind a paywall (I see you JB999), which one?
Again – so nice to see the real ones interacting in here.
I think you’ve summed up the dilemma nicely – Columbus, KC etc. need some sort of cap to survive. In a capped league though, MLS teams will struggle to get quality throughout the squad and will never be a top tier league. They can increase the cap or go to a flexible cap as others have suggested and that will allow stronger squads but, if the caps are such that they allow these stronger squads the net effect is the same: less well off teams can no longer be competitive and will gradually lose support and likely fold as MLS teams.
If MLS doesn’t significantly change the cap or get rid of it, the league has probably peaked in quality as a product. Team GMs are very creative in maximizing their squads in general so might be possible to incrementally improve MLS quality through development and/ or better scouting, I think most of the big gains in quality are already in the system.
To me this is the question MLS has to answer for themselves: are they satisfied with the quality of MLS as is or do they want to be a top tier league. Both answers are valid approaches but there are consequences to either choice.
If no real change then MLS remains a decent league that occasionally sells talent on to other better leagues. May see less top end talent, such as Insigne coming because right now they see MLS rising in stature but if it plateaus then it may be less attractive.
If MLS significantly changes the cap structure to allow stronger squads, MLS will become more of a destination for better players in their prime leading to better overall quality. The downside as you and others noted is MLS likely loses some franchises that can no longer compete and there is a risk that the whole league becomes unsustainable with not enough big teams.
It’s a difficult call as to what the right approach is and timing of changes would be critical.
I generally agree with most of that, but I’m not sure that it’s clear that smaller clubs can’t survive a lack of ‘parity’. Maybe a club could specialize in player producing and there by compete despite an inability to spend to a bigger club’s level. Maybe fans would support a lower team despite it being a perennial long shot… in fact, I can’t think of a top league that doesn’t have clubs like that.
Point taken. There is a real risk that would need to be managed though.
Would you or anyone else support Toronto FC if they were a perennial longshot? Why do you think fans in Columbus would? All North American sports have some sort of salary cap, just this week the president of UEFA said that a salary cap will eventually have to happen.
Are we that different from Argentines, Dutch, Spaniards, Germans, Britons, Scotts, or anyone else? They all do exactly that. And why shouldn’t they? Otherwise no one would support any club other than Real Madrid or Man City 😂 nor would they support any national team other than Brazil, Argentina etc
I think you over estimate the interest the typical Toronto fan has , other then the Maple Leafs no team will be supported if they are not contending for a title . We saw this with the Blue Jays where attendance was at about 50% capacity for years when they were not competing. I don’t think MLSE wants to test your theory about supporting a perennial longshot with this soccer club.
But TFC would be a much better team without a salary cap. We wouldn’t be the long shots.
It’s a fine line that the league has to be careful with, I don’t want to see a league where the financial disparity is great, as I mentioned the old NASL and I certainly don’t want to see what’s happening in Europe with the same team winning their leagues year after year, Bayern, PSG Barca-Real,Benfica-Porto, Man City, Juventus. I think North American team sports have it right competition is great hard to predict who will win NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL. We pretty well know who is winning in Europe next year.
MLS gets better every year. MLSE has grown a $10 million investment into a $700 million asset in a very short time.
Don’t think they are changing anything quickly re salary, relegation, rules as the financial model is working.
I agree that they won’t change lanes completely, but they certainly have ‘evolved’ their rules. First they added one DP. Then 3. Now young DPs. GAM and TAM. Those are all moves away from ‘parity’.
Jeff why is my last comment so narrow?? Maybe you should call DJ Khalid and get some advice?