The money in Basketball

Forbes published the article The Business of Basketball which has a lot of financial figures about the NBA. I found it interesting to see some of the details of the money in the NBA.

They say that revenue was $3.8B total for the league in the 2007-2008 season. The average profit per team was $10.6M. With 30 teams in the league that means they had $318M in total profits.

To see how each team comes out financially see the list of teams by value with revenue and operating income figures.

The most valuable teams are:
Knicks = $613M
Lakers = $584M
Bulls = $504M
Pistons = $480M
Cavaliers = $477M

It should be no surprise that wages are the biggest expense for the NBA. This site discusses the salary cap and in the discussion it says that the player salaries are about $2.0B total. Average player salaries are $5.5M.