That the Seattle Seahawks changed hands this year wasn’t too surprising—NFL rules prohibiting estates from owning franchises meant the team had been destined to hit the market since the death of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen in 2018, and the whispers began to circulate around the league before the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory in February. That billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla ultimately agreed to shell out $9.6 billion for the club wasn’t exactly a shock to NFL insiders, either, even as the price tag set a league record for a purchase of a control stake.

But it is still a little hard to grasp that a franchise worth nearly $10 billion is now merely the NFL’s 14th-most-valuable team.

In fact, ten clubs—nearly a third of the 32-team league—have enterprise values exceeding $10 billion, just two years after the Dallas Cowboys became the first franchise from any sport to cross that threshold. Today, the Cowboys are worth $17 billion, having run a fly pattern past three billion-dollar milestones since Forbes pegged them at a world-best $13 billion last year.

Dallas has led Forbes’ list of the NFL’s most valuable teams for 20 straight years, yet America’s Team continues to break new ground. Despite a Super Bowl drought that stretches back to January 1996, Jerry Jones’ Cowboys generated nearly $1.28 billion in revenue last season, according to Forbes estimates, edging Real Madrid’s $1.27 billion from 2024-25 for the largest total Forbes has ever measured for a sports team. Dallas also posted an estimated $677 million in operating income last season, putting the Cowboys $342 million ahead of the next-best NFL franchise and making them by far the world’s most profitable sports team.

There are eye-popping numbers up and down the NFL’s 2026 ranking, however. The Cincinnati Bengals—No. 32 for the fifth straight year—are now worth an estimated $8 billion, a figure that would have tied for the league lead in 2022. The average team value, meanwhile, stands at $9.5 billion, up 34% from 2025’s $7.1 billion—the NFL’s second-largest jump in percentage terms since Forbes began publishing its franchise valuations in 1998, behind only 2015’s 38% increase. The league average has also more than doubled since 2022, when it was $4.5 billion, and more than quadrupled from a decade ago.

The Seahawks have soared 43% since Forbes valued them at $6.7 billion last year, and the Bengals have scratched out an even bigger gain at 52%, up from $5.25 billion in 2025. But the Falcons are the highest flyers of all this year, rising 59% to round out the top ten at $10.1 billion, up from $6.35 billion.

The NFL bull rush is in part a reflection of a reality that no other league in the world inhabits: With the salary cap set at $301 million this year and each team banking more than $400 million from the league’s national media rights last season, according to Forbes estimates, every NFL franchise is........

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