NHL franchise values 2026: all 32 teams ranked

The NHL has quietly become one of the fastest-growing asset classes in North American professional sports. Over the past three years, the average NHL franchise value more than doubled, outpacing the NBA, NFL and MLB in percentage growth. What was once considered a distant fourth league in terms of financial weight is now drawing serious institutional money, with two major broadcast rights cycles approaching renewal on both sides of the border.

All 32 NHL teams ranked by franchise value

The rankings below cover all 32 franchises, with value, revenue and year-over-year change for the 2024-25 cycle.

Source: CNBC Official NHL Team Valuations, November 2025.

The 32 franchises combined are worth $67 billion, up from approximately $32 billion in 2022. Total hockey-related revenue reached $6.5 billion in 2024-25, with average team revenue of $243 million. Over the past three years, NHL franchise values grew 108%, faster than the NBA (+78%), the NFL (+72%) and MLB (+22%).

The revenue multiple still sits below the NBA (11.9x) and NFL (10.3x). That gap is why institutional investors increasingly treat NHL franchises as undervalued relative to the other major North American leagues. The next U.S. broadcast rights cycle, following the expiration of the ESPN/TNT deal after 2027-28, is the single biggest variable ahead. If it doubles as insiders expect, the average NHL team value could approach $4 billion before 2030.

How NHL franchise values are calculated

When a buyer acquires an NHL franchise, the price reflects not just current earnings from tickets and TV deals, but what the franchise is expected to generate over the long term. Analysts calculate that by multiplying a team’s annual revenue by a fixed coefficient, called a revenue multiple, that reflects how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of income. The higher the multiple, the more confidence the market has in the league’s growth potential.

The NHL’s average multiple currently sits at 8.4x according to CNBC, meaning a franchise generating $200 million in annual revenue is worth roughly $1.68 billion. As broadcast deals reset at higher levels and league revenue grows, that multiple rises with it, and franchise values follow.

Revenue components that feed into the calculation:

• Gate receipts: regular season and playoff ticket sales, net of ticketing fees
• Local broadcast rights: regional TV and streaming deals negotiated independently by each franchise
• National broadcast revenue: distributed equally across all 32 clubs regardless of market size
• Sponsorship and naming rights: jersey patches, arena naming, corporate partnerships
• Non-hockey arena revenue: concerts, events, and income from building operations, included for franchises that own their venue

The last category is where the two most-cited sources part ways. CNBC incorporates non-hockey arena revenue directly into its calculations. Sportico includes the value of ancillary assets held by ownership groups alongside it. The difference produces slightly different totals (CNBC puts the league average at $2.2 billion, Sportico at $2.1 billion), but both rank the same franchises at the top and bottom.

What drives the gap between the most and least valuable franchises

The NHL runs one of the most leveled financial systems in professional sports. Every team operates under the same salary cap, the draft lottery sends the best prospects to the worst franchises, and national broadcast money is split equally across all 32 clubs. Yet Toronto is worth three times more than Columbus. Four revenue categories explain why that gap persists, and why it is structural rather than cyclical.

Market size and captive demand

Gate revenue is the largest single component of the league’s total revenue pool, which means the size and loyalty of a local market sets the floor for everything else. In Toronto, season tickets sell out years in advance and corporate suites command the highest rates in the league despite the franchise not winning a Stanley Cup since 1967. That is the clearest illustration of captive demand: a market so concentrated on a single sport that on-ice results have no measurable effect on commercial performance.

Edmonton makes the same point from the opposite end of the size spectrum. The city has barely one million people, yet the Oilers rank fifth in franchise value at $3.1 billion, ahead of Boston and Chicago. There is no NBA team, no NFL team, and no other major professional sports property competing for the same audience. In a market that size, every entertainment dollar that goes to sports goes to hockey, which gives ownership pricing leverage that franchises in larger, more fragmented markets cannot replicate.

Columbus and Buffalo illustrate what happens without that dynamic. Both operate in mid-sized American markets where the NHL shares the sports calendar and the corporate sponsorship pool with NFL and NBA teams. Fan attention is divided, season ticket demand is softer, and broadcasters negotiate from a position of strength. That competition does not just cap gate revenue. It limits negotiating leverage across every other revenue line at the same time.

Broadcast rights, local and national

Every franchise receives the same share of national broadcast revenue. The Rogers Canada deal signed in April 2025, worth $7.79 billion USD over 12 years, distributes equally to Columbus and Toronto alike. That redistribution is what keeps even the least valuable franchises above $1.4 billion. It sets a financial floor for the entire league.

Local broadcast rights are where the gap opens. Montreal’s Bell Media deal pays $70 to $75 million per year starting in 2025-26, the highest local rights figure in the league, while Nashville, Winnipeg and Ottawa sit in the $15 to $25 million range. A $50 million gap in annual local broadcast revenue, applied to the 8.4x valuation multiple, produces a $420 million difference in franchise value before any other factor is considered. That arithmetic explains why Montreal ($3.4 billion) ranks above Los Angeles ($3.15 billion) despite the Kings playing in a significantly larger market.

Commercial revenue and sponsorship

Sponsorship is the revenue line most directly linked to on-ice visibility and market demographics, and the gap between the top and bottom franchises is wide. The 32 clubs collectively generated $1.53 billion in sponsorship revenue in 2024-25, but that total is heavily concentrated at the top: Toronto leads the league, ahead of Edmonton and Pittsburgh, while rebuilding franchises in smaller markets capture a fraction of that figure.

Jersey patch deals, which the NHL introduced in 2022-23, now sell for between $3.4 and $4.2 million per season across the league. That average trails the NBA and NFL significantly, where similar deals run to $15 million or more, which tells you that the NHL’s commercial market still has room to grow. Canada is one of the markets where that commercial gap is closing fastest: online entertainment platforms for example, like those reviewed on Critique Jeu, have become a recurring presence among the league’s sponsors in Canada, drawn by an audience that is both large and commercially valuable.

For franchise valuations, sponsorship revenue is particularly valuable because it is recurring and contractual. A five-year naming rights deal or jersey patch agreement adds predictable income to the revenue base that feeds directly into the valuation multiple, regardless of what the team does in the playoffs.

Arena ownership

Franchises that own their building capture all revenue generated on non-hockey nights (concerts, boxing cards, family shows), and that income feeds directly into CNBC’s valuation calculations. Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs has owned TD Garden since its opening in 1995 (then called FleetCenter), with the Celtics paying rent as tenants, which is partly why the Bruins rank sixth in franchise value despite lower gate revenue than several teams below them.

Philadelphia shows what the transition looks like in real time. The Flyers currently lease their building and collect none of that revenue. In 2030, they move into a new arena alongside the 76ers under a 50-50 ownership structure with permanent naming rights income. Ottawa and Winnipeg face the same structural ceiling: consistent attendance, no building ownership, and a valuation gap that widens quietly every year.

The salary cap and its direct connection to NHL franchise values

The salary cap is not a spending limit chosen arbitrarily. It is calculated as a direct function of hockey-related revenue (HRR): the NHL and its players split HRR 50-50, and the cap ceiling is set each year based on what that split produces. When revenue rises, the cap rises with it. When franchise values are being assessed, buyers are essentially buying a claim on future HRR. The cap trajectory is the closest thing available to a forward earnings projection for the league.

Projected. Source: NHL/NHLPA joint announcement, January 31, 2025.

The three-year freeze from 2020 to 2022 explains the rebound. The pandemic wiped out gate revenue, the cap had no room to move, and franchise values stagnated. When arenas reopened, demand had not disappeared, it had been temporarily blocked. Revenue recovered faster than projected, HRR reached $6.5 billion in 2024-25, and franchise values followed.

The next phase is structurally different because two broadcast deals are now adding fixed, predictable income on top of recovering gate revenue. The Rogers Canada deal signed in April 2025 ($7.79 billion over 12 years) more than doubles the previous arrangement and kicks in from 2026-27. The U.S. deal with ESPN and TNT expires after 2027-28 and is expected to approximately double.

Both contracts flow directly into the HRR pool that determines the cap ceiling: each $1 billion increase in league-wide revenue produces roughly $31 million in additional cap room and approximately $260 million in added franchise value per team at the 8.4x multiple. The $8.5 million cap jump for 2026-27 and the projected $9.5 million for 2027-28 are the arithmetic output of those two contracts, not optimistic assumptions.