Owner and co-founder Jerry Richardson is in the process of selling his Carolina Panthers. It comes on the heels of Richardson himself being involved in a sexual misconduct scandal that the public became aware of late in the 2017 season.
For Richardson, it has to be a bitter pill to swallow. He’s the original owner of the expansion franchise. Since its inception back in 1995, Richardson has been the face of the franchise. That will soon change.
With multiple billionaires now bidding on the Panthers, this one report notes that the franchise could end up selling for as much as $2.8 billion.
“The Panthers could sell for between $2.3 billion-$2.8 billion, experts say. And even the appearance of more credible bidders, some of whom the Observer has been able to verify, could mean a difference of a half-billion dollars in the value of the team,” Jourdan Rodrigue and Katie Peralta of The Charlotte Observer reported Thursday.
In Forbes’ most-recent franchise valuation estimates, the Panthers themselves are said to be worth $2.3 billion. Depending on just how out of hand the bidding war gets, Richardson could be looking at selling the team for a cool $500 million more than the franchise is said to be valued at.
The scandal aside, this is probably the best time for an NFL owner to be selling his/her team. Just a decade ago, the Dallas Cowboys were NFL’s most valuable franchise, worth just $1.65 billion. Ten years later, and every NFL team is valued at at least $1.6 billion with all but five reaching the $2 billion plateau.