Partner Richard Brand Talks About the Impact Media Rights Deals are Having on Sports Transactions

Law360 reported that “The most lucrative way into the sports-broadcast market is through a league wide deal, like the one DirecTV is aiming to renew with the NFL. Second to those rarer deals are the long-term, franchise-specific ones, whose prices vary widely based on the team’s appeal and its geography.”

“If you pay $2.2 billion for the Dodgers, does it mean that you would pay $2.2 billion for the Cleveland Indians?” said Mr. Brand. “No, but it means you’re going to pay a lot more for the Cleveland Indians today than you would have before the Dodgers deal.”

Mr. Brand noted that since its completion two years ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers sale has been a sports deal-making benchmark for franchise sales and media deals, essentially wiping out the more traditional approach of starting from zero to calculate valuations. “It’s almost opposite of what it used to be,” Mr. Brand said. “You have to come up with reasons for devaluing.”

To read the Law360 article, click here.