Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross recently sold a small stake in the club and its stadium, valuing them together at $2.3 billion.
When he fully completed buying those assets in 2009, his purchase price valued the stadium and team at $1.1 billion.
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NFL owners approved the limited partnership sale to developer Bruce Beal last month, and sources said Ross is negotiating with another real estate developer, Jed Walentas, on the sale of an additional small stake, as well.
The Beal stake gives him a pathway to control if Ross decides to sell the team in full or upon his death, whereas the Walentas investment would be a more traditional limited partner position.
The Dolphins declined to comment on the sales, though they have previously confirmed there is a succession plan that leaves Beal owning the team.
The $2.3 billion franchise valuation figure also underscores the continued increase in value of sports teams — and in particular, NFL clubs.
“It’s difficult to opine on that value given I don’t know the economics and all the particulars other than the fact that given the recent renovations [to Dolphins Stadium] and what I know about their management team, I can understand a significant increase in value,” said Mitchell Ziets, a sports finance consultant.
Ross is spending about $500 million to renovate the stadium, and under team President Tom Garfinkel, Miami has dramatically improved its local revenue. The limited partnership sales are intended to help Ross defray some of the renovation costs.
A spokesman for Walentas declined to comment.
Walentas and Beal are markedly different from the limited partners brought on board when Ross first bought the team. At that time, he tapped celebrities — including Venus and Serena Williams, Gloria Estefan, and Marc Anthony — for deals. Their investments were minuscule, a team source said, and some of them are no longer affiliated with the team, though the source declined to identify who. But critics reacted sharply to the celebrity angle, contending Ross was more interested in the glitz of ownership than fielding a winning team.
The New York developer quickly moved away from that strategy, and in an interview last year, he grudgingly admitted it was a mistake, at least in terms of announcing the celebrities so soon into his ownership tenure.
The Dolphins’ valuation figure is the highest such public mark in the NFL connected to a transaction. While there are higher media estimates for NFL teams, those figures are not tied to specific equity sales.
The most recent full sale of an NFL team was in 2014, when Terry and Kim Pegula bought the Buffalo Bills for $1.4 billion.
