Flyers are NHL’s 7th-most valuable team
It's no secret that the National Hockey League is swimming in money. Between sold-out arenas and the billions of dollars in TV revenue from Comcast and Rogers, the league and its teams are richer than ever.
We got a sense of just how much cash is in the NHL's collective bank on Tuesday, when Forbes released its latest team valuations.
The Flyers are ranked No. 7, with a franchise value of $625 million. That's a 25 percent increase from the last rankings a year ago, and the ninth-biggest jump among the NHL's 30 clubs.
Their total revenue is $136 million, and operating income (i.e. profit) comes in at $11 million. Those figures rank No. 9 and No. 14 leaguewide, respectively.
At the top of the franchise value charts, not surprisingly, are the Toronto Maple Leafs at $1.3 billion (U.S.). The New York Rangers ($1.1 billion) and Montréal Canadiens ($1 billion) are the other teams whose values reach into 10 figures.
Those same three teams are atop the charts in total revenue and operating income, with the Rangers No. 1 in both categories - $217 million and $84.4 million, respectively.
The team whose value jumped the most was the New York Islanders, with a 54 percent increase. At the other end, the Florida Panthers' value crashed by 21 percent – and they were the only team in the league whose value decreased.
Flyers fans might also be interested to know that Ray Emery made the list of Forbes' best goaltenders for the money, coming in at No. 10.
But shockingly, the Flyers did not make the list of the NHL's 10 best fan bases. Pittsburgh, Chicago (okay, I'll grant that one), Boston and Buffalo were all deemed superior by the New York-based (ahem) magazine.
These were Forbes' criteria for ranking fan bases:
Our ranking was calculated based on five measurable (i.e. quantifiable, computable, not biased or based on hatred for any team) fan engagement criteria: hometown crowd reach (defined as a percentage of the local population that watched, attended, and/or listened to a game in the last year), 3 years worth of television ratings, 3 years of arena attendance based on capacity reached, 3 years worth of merchandise sales, and social media reach (a combination of Facebook likes and Twitter followers).
I suspect that Flyers fans are more social media-savvy than Forbes is willing to give them credit for - and I suspect that they'll let the magazine know it.
Or at least they would if the author of the fan rankings was on Twitter. As far as I can tell, that's not the case. Naturally.