Sports team ownership has turned into one of the best-performing assets of the past decade, and wealthy investors are piling in — good for those with access, out of reach for most people.

• Team values have compounded at 18% a year for a decade, driven by TV and streaming rights, not ticket sales.
• Sports are now almost all of the top-rated live programming, because they are the only thing people still watch with ads.
• The appeal is that teams barely move with the stock market, so they smooth out a portfolio when stocks fall.
• The same logic points to energy and defense: private energy deals are selling at a fraction of what big tech stocks cost, and NATO countries are being pushed to nearly double military spending.
• Data centers are the next big electricity bet, with AI framed as a race the U.S. cannot afford to lose to China.

Outlook: The NFL can renegotiate its media rights in 2029, and those deals look cheap next to the NBA's, so team values are likely to keep climbing.