In and around Dallas, sports fans looking for a trophy are better off turning to baseball or basketball – and things have hardly been easy for the Mavericks either, with the Nowitzki era over and the Doncic era cut short just as it was beginning to take shape. As for American football, best to look elsewhere. The Cowboys have gone three decades without a Super Bowl win. They also have the NFL’s longest active run without reaching a conference championship game – the stage where the season starts to get serious. A Cinderella of the gridiron. And, at the same time, a gold mine. Because despite everything that has happened on the field, the Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise in the world.
For some perspective: the Los Angeles Lakers have just been sold for a record $12.5 billion. It still would not be enough to buy the Cowboys, valued at least $15.5 billion. The figure is still climbing, too: the Cowboys rose 22% in value over the past year alone. They have been at the top of the rankings for years. And to think Jerry Jones, the American oil magnate, paid just $150 million for the franchise in 1989. Today it is worth a hundred times that. Over the same period, the S&P 500 has risen ‘only’ 27-fold.
Much of the credit belongs to Jones, and to a set of unusually aggressive business decisions. In the 1990s, the Cowboys changed the way the NFL did business – licences, merchandising, infrastructure, hospitality, sponsorships. Jones saw the commercial potential of the stadium and began signing multimillion-dollar deals with American Express, Nike and Pepsi. Before long, the rest of the league was following their lead. The NFL’s revenues grew at extraordinary speed, turning the league into the global sporting power it is today: a machine generating almost $15 billion a year.
The strange thing is that, despite their disappointing record on the field, Dallas remain one of the most popular teams among American fans. From a European perspective, that is hard to get your head around. Then again, with no promotion or relegation, there is no real penalty for being mediocre. Back in the old continent, only Real Madrid generates more annual revenue than the Cowboys, at $1.3 billion. Real have had to become the most successful club in football history to get there. Dallas have taken a different route. There are plenty of ways to make a fortune. Winning is not necessarily one of them.