Spanish soccer club Real Madrid may be the most valuable sports franchise in the world, and the team is set to show that through the sale of a “symbolic” stake.

Real Madrid is one of the most storied sports franchises with 36 LaLiga championships, 15 Champions League titles, and 9 FIFA World Cup wins. Its structure is very different from what fans are used to in the U.S.—since 1902, it has been owned by its socios, or formal members, who pay annual fees, elect the board, and vote on key decisions. Right now, there are about 100,000 socios.

The club is considering taking outside investment for the first time, team president Florentino Pérez said over the weekend during the club’s annual general assembly. The plan would be to create a new subsidiary that would hold a minority stake—Pérez said 5% as an example. It would be a “symbolic” and limited stake, with the socios continuing to have control. Pérez described any investor as “a strategic ally and never an owner,” and said if they “wish to transfer their stake, Real Madrid will always have the right to reclaim it.”

“This way we can know what the club is worth,” he said, according to a translation of his comments. 

Any agreement would require socios approval, and Pérez said he would hold an “extraordinary assembly” for a vote to occur. No time frame was given, and the team did not respond to a request for comment.

The sale of even a small stake in Real Madrid could show it is the most valuable franchise in the world.

“They’d be number one,” says John Textor, who owns multiple soccer clubs, including Lyon in France and Botafogo in Brazil. 

“The Spanish-speaking market has by far the largest number of people watching football,” Textor tells Front Office Sports. “Real Madrid is the mother ship in the mother country.”

The sale of the Lakers at a $10 billion valuation currently holds the record for the highest valuation in a pro sports change-of-control deal, having eclipsed the Celtics sale at a $6.1 billion valuation. A number of NFL teams have recently sold minority stakes at similar valuations, including the Giants, who sold a 10% stake at a valuation of more than $10 billion.

To date, Chelsea holds the record for the highest valuation of a soccer team with its $5.25 billion (£4.25 billion) sale in 2022 to a group led by Todd Boehly (who was also involved in the Lakers deal).

When valuing a sports team, revenue multiples are a common benchmark, alongside brand strength, global reach, and predictable cash flow. Houlihan Lokey’s latest report on the sports market illustrates how much these multiples can vary: The Lakers were valued at roughly 18.3 times revenue, while the $1.7 billion sale of the Rays implied a multiple of about 5.6 times revenue.

Real Madrid’s most recently reported revenue was a record $1.37 billion (€1.185 billion) for the 2024–25 season. Applying those same multiples, a Lakers-style valuation would put the club at roughly $24 billion (€21 billion), while a midpoint between the Lakers and Rays deals would still imply a valuation of around $16 billion (€14 billion).

Real Madrid is not planning to offload a majority stake. But selling a minority stake to an external investor “protects the club” from being viewed as overpricing itself the next time it asks socio members to commit more capital, according to Peter Grieve, chairman and CEO of Football.Enterprises Inc., which intends to invest in multiple soccer clubs and in June announced a $150 million bond offering to support that plan.

“You’re letting the market determine what that value is, and you get to maintain the socio or association structure,” Grieve tells FOS.

Experts say likely buyers for a 5% Real Madrid stake include sovereign wealth funds like the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, or sports-focused private-equity firms like Sixth Street or Arctos Partners. 

Grieve—who previously spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs—cautions that the typical private-equity ownership model isn’t ideal for soccer clubs, however. PE funds have defined investment horizons, and after a certain period of time—typically no longer than 10–12 years—they are required to monetize their positions to provide liquidity to limited partners.

“They are not good long-term owners,” Grieve tells FOS. 

Kalshi just took a major legal hit in Nevada. A federal judge cleared the way for the state’s gaming regulator to enforce its cease-and-desist order over the prediction-markets platform’s sports event contracts.

The 29-page decision from U.S. District Judge Andrew P. Gordon, issued Monday, comes almost eight months after Judge Gordon ruled in the opposite direction in April, albeit on a preliminary basis. Then, the judge ruled that the Nevada Gaming Control Board could not block Kalshi from offering sports event contracts while the case played out.

Now, following a Nov. 14 hearing at which Judge Gordon sounded suspect of maintaining that decision, he has determined that the facts have changed, and so has his opinion. 

“Kalshi relies on a strained reading of the already convoluted Commodities Exchange Act (CEA) in an attempt to evade state regulation,” the judge wrote. “Kalshi’s interpretation would require all sports betting across the country to come within the jurisdiction of the CFTC rather than the states and Indian tribes. That interpretation upsets decades of federalism regarding gaming regulation, is contrary to Congress’ intent behind the CEA, and cannot be sustained.”

This is one of many cases playing out across the country. Kalshi is involved in a number of them, but other prediction-markets players are fighting legal battles as well, including Robinhood and Crypto.com. Last month, Judge Gordon ruled in favor of the Nevada regulator in a separate case from Crypto.com, saying he would not prohibit the regulator from taking action, for now. No major rulings have been made yet in a similar case brought by Robinhood, which was filed in August.

The legal battle centers on whether there is any distinction between traditional sports betting and sports event contracts. Traditional sports betting is regulated on a state-by-state basis in the U.S., while prediction-markets platforms like Kalshi have been offering sports event contracts in all 50 states. Currently, 38 states and Washington, D.C., allow some form of online betting (Missouri is set to become the 39th state on Dec. 1).

The judge admitted this is a “novel and evolving area of the law,” and says his opinion has changed as “new arguments, facts, and law develop.”

A Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement “we respectfully disagree with this decision. As other courts have recognized, Kalshi is a regulated, nationwide exchange for real-world events, and it is subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction. It’s very different from what state-regulated sportsbooks and casinos offer their customers. We look forward to the opportunity to present our case to the Ninth Circuit.”

Kalshi has since formally appealed.

A representative for the Nevada Gaming Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the regulator said late Tuesday it will not hesitate to take enforcement action against Kalshi and other companies that continue to offer what it regards as unlawful sports betting in the state.

In addition to Nevada, Kalshi and others have been hit with cease-and-desists from regulators in at least six other states: Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Montana, Arizona, and Illinois. Kalshi has sued the regulators in Nevada, New Jersey, and Maryland. It also faces lawsuits from the Massachusetts Attorney General and Native American tribes in California and Wisconsin.

Nevada’s gaming regulator has been particularly aggressive in its stance against prediction markets. It warned sports betting operators last month that it considers sports-prediction markets to be illegal gambling, and it threatened to take action if companies offer sports event contracts without approval. That caused FanDuel and DraftKings, both of which are planning to launch prediction-markets platforms soon, to withdraw their applications in the state.

Despite the legal challenges, the rise of prediction markets is causing chaos in the sports betting world and cannot be denied. In addition to DraftKings and FanDuel, Polymarket is preparing a full U.S. relaunch after being barred from operating in the country under an agreement with the Joe Biden–era CFTC, armed with up to $2 billion from the parent of the New York Stock Exchange. 

Other players include PrizePicks, Underdog, Novig, and President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform. Fanatics is also plotting a prediction-markets platform, and Coinbase is reportedly working on a prediction-markets platform that will be powered by Kalshi.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday the league can tell Polymarket and Kalshi to take down specific event contracts it does not approve of.

Bettman’s remarks came during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. He said the power to direct Polymarket and Kalshi to remove certain contracts is a benefit to the multiyear agreements it reached with those two platforms late last month. Polymarket and Kalshi became “official prediction markets partners” of the NHL, gaining access to proprietary data and the right to use NHL logos on their platforms.

Polymarket and Kalshi—whose sports event contracts are viewed as controversial because they appear so similar to sports betting—have not yet gained similar support from other top pro leagues like the NBA, NFL, and MLB.

Bettman said the agreements were made in part because the league thinks it’s important for fans to know that event contracts are “based on real data.” (Event contract trading involves a user buying a position based on the predicted outcome of an individual game or event, such as “Will the Lightning beat the Flyers?”)

“But more importantly, it gives us control, because we have the ability to take down any contracts we don’t think are appropriate,” he said.

A Kalshi spokesperson confirmed to Front Office Sports that part of the arrangement with the NHL is working together to address contracts the league might have concerns with. 

“A big value of being an official partner of ours is that we can address these things before they go live instead of after,” the spokesperson says.

To date, they say there have not been any contracts the league asked to remove.

A representative for Polymarket declined to comment.

Bettman also touched on the recent gambling scandals that have rocked the NBA and MLB—in the NBA, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones were indicted as part of an alleged scheme that involved insiders selling information to bettors about who would play on a given night; Rozier is specifically accused of purposely taking himself out of a game in order to make sure certain “under” prop bets hit. In MLB, two Guardians pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, were indicted for alleged involvement in a scheme to rig individual pitches to benefit bettors. All of those athletes have pleaded not guilty.

Bettman does not believe the NHL is as vulnerable as those leagues.

“I don’t believe our game is susceptible in perhaps the way some others might be,” he said, adding that the league monitors “every second of every game,” as well as lines on betting apps and prediction-markets platforms.

“Being aligned with either the sports betting entities or prediction-market entities gives you the ability to have more control and to observe more closely exactly what’s going on. It’s more protective than anything to have these alignments.”

A representative for the NHL did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.