Now that the major league baseball season is finally underway, we were wondering which franchises in either the National or American leagues are the most valuable out of all of Major League Baseball (MLB). Has the Red Sox Nation really overwhelmed those damned New York Yankees? How badly has Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos damaged the value of that team?

Sure, we could look at the payrolls of each team, take their minor league farm systems into account, or go by the value of their broadcasting rights, but those measures wouldn't necessarily reflect the value of each brand in baseball. Television and radio broadcast income is shared between teams according to a formula set by MLB. An older major league franchise is much more likely to have an extensive farm system compared to a much newer one, which would skew the data in favor of older teams. Relative payrolls between teams are affected by salary cap and luxury tax considerations. So, how could we find the relative value of each team?

We finally hit on the idea of using the ultimate expression of fan loyalty: the authentic home jersey. Here, if we consider those jerseys that have not been customized in any way, to remove vanity and star player effects upon their value, we might reasonably get a measure of each team's value with respect to one another, simply by comparing the price of each. The cool part of this approach is that the price of a non-customized authentic home jersey would provide a fairly solid representation of the value of a team's brand - their value would purely be determined by the value that those teams biggest fans place upon their teams!

From here, all it took was a shopping trip to MLB.com to find the prices of each MLB team's authentic home jersey. Our results are tabulated in the dynamic table below - you can sort the data in the table by clicking the various column headings. We've also included each team's 2007 winning percentage to see to what extent how well they performed last season might affect their relative values.

Major League Baseball Authentic Home Jersey Prices

City or State	Team	League	2007 Winning Percentage	Authentic Home Jersey Price	Comment
Arizona	Diamondbacks	National	0.556	189.99	2007 NL West Division Champion
Atlanta	Braves	National	0.519	169.99	None
Baltimore	Orioles	American	0.426	129.99	None
Boston	Red Sox	American	0.593	174.99	2007 World Series Patch, World Series Champions
Chicago	White Sox	American	0.444	129.99	None
Chicago	Cubs	National	0.525	139.99	2007 NL Central Division Champion
Cincinnati	Reds	National	0.444	149.99	None
Cleveland	Indians	American	0.593	189.99	2007 AL Central Division Champion
Colorado	Rockies	National	0.552	189.99	2007 World Series Patch, 2007 NL Wild Card
Detroit	Tigers	American	0.543	139.99	None
Florida	Marlins	National	0.438	199.99	World Series 10th Anniversary Patch
Houston	Astros	National	0.451	189.99	None
Kansas City	Royals	American	0.426	159.99	None
Los Angeles	Dodgers	National	0.506	149.99	None
Los Angeles	Angels	American	0.58	189.99	2007 AL West Champion
Milwaukee	Brewers	National	0.512	189.99	None
Minnesota	Twins	American	0.488	159.99	None
New York	Yankees	American	0.58	149.99	2008 All Star and Yankee Stadium Commemorative Patches, 2007 AL Wild Card
New York	Mets	National	0.543	169.99	2008 Shea Stadium Commemorative Patch
Oakland	Athletics	American	0.469	139.99	None
Philadelphia	Phillies	National	0.549	149.99	2007 NL East Division Champion
Pittsburgh	Pirates	National	0.42	159.99	None
San Diego	Padres	National	0.546	159.99	None
San Francisco	Giants	National	0.438	174.99	2007 All-Star Patch
Seattle	Mariners	American	0.543	179.99	30th Anniversary Patch
St. Louis	Cardinals	National	0.481	199.99	2006 World Series Champions Patch
Tampa Bay	Rays	American	0.407	219.99	New Jersey for 2008
Texas	Rangers	American	0.463	179.99	None
Toronto	Blue Jays	American	0.512	139.99	None
Washington (DC)	Nationals	National	0.451	189.99	None

There are a lot of surprises in this data! And, as it turns out, some problems as well. Let's discuss the surprises first, and get our first reactions to the data recorded for posterity.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are the most valuable team in baseball?!!!! That's can't be right! How come the damned Yankees are in the middle of the pack? And the Boston Red Sox, too!? But then the Chicago White Sox and the Baltimore Orioles are in the basement. Where they belong. So how far off can we be?

Pretty far off as it turns out. Just looking at authentic home jersey prices is like looking only at the price of a stock. To get a much better sense of a value of a brand, we need to find out what each team's effective market capitalization value might be, just like we would in considering the relative values of companies. A company's market cap is determined by multiplying its price per share of stock by the number of shares in the market. Likewise, for our approach to really work, we would need to find out how many of each kind of MLB authentic home jersey has been produced.

And that's where we hit a dead end with this particular project. MLB's exclusive producer of authentic home jerseys, Majestic, declined our request for the data, so we're investigating other means of obtaining it for a future post.

Meanwhile, we do have some anecdotal evidence that supports our idea of using team jersey market cap values as an effective measure of each team's brand. Visiting a local major big box sports apparel retailer revealed that a higher volume of Yankee jerseys must be being produced (as we're far away from the home New York market), as are Boston Red Sox jerseys. The most common jersey in evidence however was the one for our local major league franchise, which is what we would expect.

And we also discovered that Tampa Bay recently redesigned their uniforms for 2008, which suggests that the price may be deceptively high as a measure of team value, as it may be more reflective of the new jersey being in comparatively short supply. We'll give Tampa Bay some credit - it's a really nice looking jersey. Now all they need is a good team to wear them!...

Speaking of which, winning percentage doesn't seem to have much correlation with home jersey prices - maybe that will change if we can ever get the quantity data we're now seeking, but it might explain why Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos' consistently underinvests in his team. He could very well be the Bill Bidwell of baseball!

Labels: business, marketing, sports

- posted by Ironman at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Home |