Jerry Jones says Dallas Cowboys could sell for over $10 billion but that he will never do it

Every year when Forbes releases their annual rankings of the most valuable sports teams in the world the Dallas Cowboys generally land at the very top of it.

The Cowboys are America’s Team and the biggest draw in professional sports which is a big part of their value. Obviously they are approaching 30 years without winning a championship, but in the world of what sells that isn’t necessarily the most important thing.

Elsewhere in the National Football League the Denver Broncos are currently up for sale and are expected to go for somewhere in the range of $4.5 billion. That is obviously a lot of money, but owning an NFL team is a pretty profitable business venture so it stands to reason that whoever winds up purchasing them will make a huge profit.

What could the Dallas Cowboys sell for if they were ultimately on the market? Jerry Jones things the answer is at least twice of that and then some.

Jerry Jones says Dallas Cowboys could sell for over $10 billion but that he will never do it

While the Cowboys’ title drought is not yet three decades old Jerry Jones’ ownership of the team already is and we all know that he has certainly made up for the $150M that he invested in the team when he bought it back in 1989. Again, owning an NFL team is generally something that leads to pockets becoming more full.

In this week’s Football Morning In America Peter King asked Jerry Jones about the pending sale of the Broncos and told him one evaluator said the Cowboys could go for somewhere around $8 to $8.5 billion. Jerry thinks it is a bit more than that.

Amazing, especially considering that when Forbes did its annual valuation of franchises this year, the Broncos were 10th. So if the Broncos are 10th and worth $4.5 billion, what are the rolling-in-dough Cowboys worth? Forbes says $6.5 billion. The smartest business consultant in NFL circles, Marc Ganis, told me he thinks Jones would get $8 billion or $8.5 billion if he tried to sell. Jones, when I asked him, said:

“Ten up.”

Asked to clarify, he said, “more than $10 billion.”

“But let me make this very clear,” Jones said. “I’ll say it definitively. I will never do it. I will never sell the Cowboys. Ever.”

That is an absurd number but it isn’t ridiculous to consider that the Cowboys could set a massive record if they ever were sold. Obviously Jerry made sure to make it clear that he will never sell the team so whatever evaluation the team would have is ultimately moot to a certain degree.

The Cowboys did experience a great amount of football success early on in Jones’ tenure as owner, president, and general manager, but most of his reign has now seemingly featured the Cowboys as the center of attention without any hardware to show for it.

Not that this is news by any means, but another part of Jerry’s conversation with Peter King was about this idea. Jerry noted that he likes his team being a part of the show and that it is his belief that fans enjoy things associated with that like the owner being in the paper every now and then.

Jones thinks there’s another part of the story that’s harder to quantify. He just knows it exists. That’s the fact that people want to have a favorite team, and they want to follow the roller coaster of that team, and they want to get to know the players and know their strength and weaknesses and triumphs and foibles.

To Jones, there’s no such thing as bad coverage of the Cowboys. Bad coverage makes the Cowboys human. And he is positive his fan base loves the human.

“Let me tell you a story,” Jones said, warming to this topic. “A few years after I bought the team, I’m out in Los Angeles having lunch with David Hill and Ed Goren of FOX. At that time, there were a lot of negative headlines about the Cowboys. Michael Irvin was in the headlines. People are saying, ‘The owner’s an outlaw!’ And so that day I told them, ‘I’m tightening the lid on this franchise. We’re gonna get control of this team.’

“And David Hill jumped up. He said, “NO! Do not touch my ‘Boys! They are television gold! Don’t even think about it!’

“The foibles, the soap opera, the issues. They create interest. Add in the Senior Bowl, the combine, free agency, the draft, training camp, we always got something going. People follow us year ‘round. The owner every now and then gets in the paper. It just adds to the interest, all of it. People love that.”

You would be hard pressed to find a Dallas Cowboys fan who feels like there is no such thing as bad coverage of the team. On the whole the Cowboys have been in the news for very troubling reasons at times and those certainly qualify as instances of bad news.

Jerry is right that foibles and what not do create interest, such is the way that life goes. People like points of entertainment because the rise and fall of things is interesting, but those methods are best reserved for movies and television.