FRISCO - Forbes magazine named the Dallas Cowboys as the most valuable of the 32 NFL franchises, putting Jerry Jones' team's number at $10.1 billion.
Forbes magazine is wrong.
The Los Angeles Lakers just set the record for the largest sale of a sports franchise ever, with Mark Walter, Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners and the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, buying the crown jewel of the NBA for $10 billion.
Walter, according to Bloomberg, has a net worth estimated at $12.5 billion.
That's as big as it gets ... and yet with all due respect to basketball and the Lakers?
That's not the NFL. And that's not the Cowboys.
It all leads to a most natural question, though, as it relates to the NFL ...
If the Lakers are worth $10 billion ...
What are Jerry's Cowboys worth?
We could start here, going back to the Forbes evaluation. In August 2024, the outlet pegged the Lakers as being worth $7 billion.
Then comes the sale at $10 billion.
That's a 43-percent jump from that original valuation.
Now, before we do the same exercise, know that the idea of Jones selling "America's Team'' is fantasy. (And to Jerry's critics, a delightful one.) He has spoken to us numerous times about how this is a "family business'' and that his children and grandchildren and future heirs will "own the Cowboys long after I'm gone.''
As Jerry has said to us: "The Cowboys are simply not for sale. Ever.
Jones, 82, has recently overseen a very subtle change in that regard. His adult children are Stephen, Charlotte and Jerry Jr., and increasingly, when their names are in the news, they are referred to as "co-owners.''
A family business.
Back in 2018 - when the Cowboys were valued at $5 billion, he spoke to Bloomberg about a scenario in which he "had to sell the team,'' and said, "I wouldn’t accept anything less than $10 billion.''
Again, this isn't happening. But ... maybe if he "had to sell'' the number would once again be double the valuation, so ...$20 billion, maybe?
Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989 for $150 million - which was a record at the time. His stewardship has build him and family an empire ... one that can't be matched even by what just happened with the Lakers. ...
And one that's not going to change, no matter the criticism from those who wish Jerry Jones would change his mind about selling.