Sportico: NBA teams took in $13.7B of a $14.5B 2025-26
Sportico estimates the NBA made about $14.5 billion in 2025-26, with the 30 clubs taking in $13.7 billion, or $456 million apiece. Team revenue ranged from $895 million for Golden State to $339 million for Memphis, both after revenue sharing. National TV payouts rise about 7% a year on average. Local business—tickets, sponsorships and arena events—helps explain much of the gap between clubs.
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Key takeaways
Sportico estimates NBA teams’ combined revenue at $13.7B for 2025-26, versus $13.2B for MLB clubs in 2025.
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Sportico's Kurt Badenhausen published a full breakdown of NBA finances on October 20. He puts the NBA's 2025-26 revenue at roughly $14.5 billion. The 30 clubs took in $13.7 billion of that, or $456 million apiece.
The team total includes concerts and other non-NBA events at arenas the clubs own or run. The league keeps part of the $14.5 billion at its own level to cover investments and expenses. For anyone who sells to, sponsors or operates alongside an NBA club, the more useful question is where the new money came from. Most of it came from a single contract.
One contract, most of the raise
The national check, then and next
Sportico; Front Office Sports
The last figure is the one finance teams will care about most. Payouts rise about 7% a year on average, so the largest single line in a club's budget can be modeled a decade out. Gate receipts can't. Ticket money depends on who wins. The TV escalator doesn't.
The baseline helps here. In 2022, Front Office Sports reported that media rights made up roughly $2.6 billion of the league's annual revenue. The new deals are worth $6.9 billion a year, more than two and a half times that figure.
Between the NFL and MLB models
Sportico says the new media deal pushes the NBA closer to the NFL's economic model.
Sportico's latest estimates put NBA teams' combined revenue at $13.7 billion, above MLB clubs at $13.2 billion. The baseball figures cover the 2025 calendar season and the basketball figures cover 2025-26, which is the closest like-for-like comparison available.
For sponsorship and partnership teams, the share tells you more than the total. With 41% coming from central revenue, the remaining 59% (our arithmetic) is the local business the club sells itself: tickets, suites, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, local media and arena events. A brand buying a team partnership deals with that local side. And that side explains the gap between the league's top and bottom clubs.
Arenas widen the gap at the top
Team revenue ranged from $895 million for the Golden State Warriors to $339 million for the Memphis Grizzlies. Both figures are after revenue sharing, which moved roughly $400 million to lower-revenue teams. High-revenue clubs and 50% of luxury tax proceeds fund that pool.
Sportico's $13.7 billion team figure is net of revenue sharing and includes non-NBA events, such as concerts, at buildings teams own or operate. The $14.5 billion league figure is larger because part of it stays with the league for investments and expenses.
Golden State is a different case. The Warriors' revenue rose from $833 million in 2024-25 to $895 million in 2025-26, the most in the league in both seasons. Brady Klopfer of Golden State of Mind points to Chase Center, the privately funded arena the ownership group built in 2019. By building it, he writes, the Warriors have become the landlords to the biggest concerts in the Bay Area, with Doja Cat, Phoebe Bridgers, the Jonas Brothers and Journey booked in the coming weeks. It is also home to the WNBA's Golden State Valkyries, a separate entity under the same ownership that Sportico values at $850 million.
Golden State led the league with $895 million in team revenue in 2025-26, according to Sportico. When a club controls its building and keeps it busy on non-game nights, local revenue can grow faster than the league's shared money.
Memphis shows the other side. The Grizzlies had the lowest revenue in Sportico's figures in both seasons, at $301 million in 2024-25 and $339 million in 2025-26. Those totals are net of revenue sharing. High-revenue teams and 50% of luxury tax proceeds paid for that system, which sent roughly $400 million to low-revenue teams. The same per-team national TV payout is a much larger share of a $339 million budget than of an $895 million one.
Local media was a weak point in 2024-25. Sportico reported that basketball-related income came to $10.25 billion that season. That figure, which determines the salary cap, was held down by a choppy local media market and by several small-market teams advancing to the conference finals, which reduced postseason gate receipts. Because of that, teams received more than $480 million from the escrow fund, which exists to keep revenue divided 51-49 between players and owners. Partners with deals tied to regional broadcast inventory should keep a close eye on the local media numbers.
Expansion changes the per-team math
The league has global ambitions, including plans to build new leagues in Africa and Europe, and it has a new blockbuster TV contract. Together, those have led investors to push up the price of owning 1/30th of it. Sportico puts the average franchise at $6.64 billion, up 21% in a year and 157% from $2.58 billion in 2021. Memphis, the lowest-valued club, is worth $4.2 billion, 2.8 times its 2021 value of $1.51 billion.
According to signals from the league, a call on expansion franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle should come before the year ends. One detail is worth tracking: Sportico's $281 million per-team TV projection assumes a 30-team league. If the league grows to 32 teams, that assumption no longer holds.
Sources
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