Franchise Values in North American Professional Sports Leagues: Evidence from a Repeat Sales Method

Abstract

The paper develops a quality adjusted professional sports franchise price index for North America based on a repeat sale method. This index reflects trends in the general price of sports franchises holding local market, facility, and team characteristics constant. The price index exhibits considerable volatility but no upward trend over time, unlike previous quality adjusted price indexes based on hedonic models in the literature. The lack of an upward trend in this quality adjusted price index indicates that specific franchise characteristics drives observed increases in prices over the past forty years.repeat sales method, sports franchise, quality adjusted price index