The Golden State Warriors are now worth $3.1 billion according to Forbes magazine.
The valuation is a whopping 19 percent increase from last year, when the Warriors were valued by the magazine at a little over $2.5 billion. The increase now makes them the third most valuable team in the NBA, behind the New York Knicks ($3.6 billion) and Los Angeles Lakers ($3.3 billion). The Warriors were ranked fourth last year, but leapfrogged the struggling Chicago Bulls ($2.6 billion) in 2017.
This number should only continue increasing as the Warriors prepare to move into their new state-of-the-art Chase Center arena in San Francisco in late 2019. The move to the new venue will probably also include a hike in ticket prices, which is one of the primary reasons Golden State’s valuation skyrocketed over the past 12 months. Ticket prices have increased by 25 percent since the Warriors won their second title in three seasons last June.
The NBA as a whole is also continuing to grow in value. For the first time, the average team is now worth over a billion dollars ($1.65 billion) a 22 percent increase from last year.
