Most Valuable Sports Teams

True. Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR driver) bikes like 75 miles (not joking) on an average race weekend and then jumps in the car.

Much as I admire the drivers of these fast vehicles I think the main factor in being the best is the car itself. Almost any of the top 20 drivers would win if they had the same cars as the leaders. It would only be a true sport if all the drivers had the same vehicle. Most races the pole position (great advantage) and the lap times are only differing by 0.25 of a second and the best cars give this advantage.

Maybe so but then you could argue that minor differences in equipment (even the friction coefficient of a swimmer's Speedos) can be the difference between victory and failure. And even if you are 100% correct and what determines the winner in auto racing is the machine and not the driver, it's still true that every one of the drivers on the track is amazing at what they do and I think they qualify as athletes.

eh... I might be ignorant here but I feel like F1 drivers have a LOT more control over the outcome of a race than a jockey. In some places they have replaced the jockeys with robots. They are little more than ballast. The jockey's chief role is to be as tiny and underweight as possible, and then hang on. I think. Maybe there's more to it than that.

and if the drivers' contributions were really so minimal then there would not be legendary drivers out there who win many different races driving for many different teams in many different cars... it would be all about teams and manufacturers and nobody would know who the drivers were. But that's obviously not the case.

Playing devils advocate here, nobody would consider a musician an athlete, even though being a good one requires a good deal of physical skill.

"Some people just want to watch the world burn."

You just rained on my parade, Kal, but I'm still happy that I added another one to my list - Real Madrid. I keep trying.

I'm sure that it helped living and working overseas

Almost certainly San Antonio (with a username of punkybrewster). NBA Spurs have won 5 championships since they drafted Tim Duncan, now retired but they are still winning.

And the value of all NBA teams has skyrocketed. NBA was giving teams away in the early 2010s.

Yeah, another who is surprised by some of the teams on the list. I'm not convinced that 'all' those American sports teams are worth more than the vast majority of the big European football sides (thos enot on the list), but I guess it depends how you choose to measure it.

I'm also very surpirsed to see Arsenal on the list ahead of Liverpool. I would have thought the latter had a much bigger global fan base. Maybe the value aspect includes stadium capacity and thus ability to earn income from match receipts.

Ohh and as a Brit, I need way more time for this quiz. My knowledge of US sports teams is probably only slightly better than the average American sportfan's knowledge of European football teams. The answers come to me, but slowly.

Well the Rams were great last season and are currently great again. They play in a huge market, and will have partial ownership rights to a brand new stadium that is currently being built in a planned community. Plus the ownership stake comes with a percentage of shared profits from the world's most profitable sports league, so...the fact that the Rams don't have a ton of fans *right now* (although knowing people from LA, the number of fans is doubling daily with the Rams' winning record) doesn't factor into the math too much.

The fans were already with their senses. And so were 90% of all Native Americans polled who saw no problem with the team name, which is not and never was a slur. Of those 90% most either liked the team name and logo, or just didn't give a crap.

However, what did eventually happen is that the team owners decided that they could make more money trying to appear woke and racially conscious by giving in to the demands of a vocal, misguided minority. And so they did.

Bravo, another stunningly cold-hearted reply. The poll you reference has come under fire for multiple methodological issues. Had a good chuckle thinking about Dan Snyder, surely one of the worst NFL owners in the league's history and certainly one of the sleaziest, deciding that somehow caving to the "woke mob" and changing the name would make him more money. Washington is one of the worst teams to play football this century and they did the right thing in changing their crappy team's name, not least because they represent the capital of a nation with a repulsive history of the systematic destruction of indigenous peoples. And the best they could come up with for a replacement was "Commanders" and they still play, on the whole, atrociously bad football. The DMV should consider itself blessed to even have an NFL franchise.

Incredible, did you come up with that one all by yourself?

Titans, at least as of right now

Ha ha, I can hear the sand grinding in the underpants through this text, kal. Well done.