Toronto Blue Jays pitcher <strong>R.A.</strong> <strong>Dickey</strong> (43) pitches during the game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Rogers Centre.JOHN E. SOKOLOWSKI
Buying a sports team is never a unanimously popular move with public shareholders, but the Blue Jays deal is working out just fine for Rogers Communications Inc.
Bloomberg went through the finances of baseball to come up with franchise valuations, and the numbers are more generous to the Blue Jays than some previous surveys.
Rogers paid $137-million for the Blue Jays 13 years ago. The value of the team alone has risen four times since then.
Bloomberg puts the Jays total value at $950-million (U.S.), 12th in the league. The team alone is worth $573-million, 17th in the league. The difference is largely the value of the sports networks Rogers owns, which are fed with Jays content.
Ignoring cash plowed into the Jays, that's an annual rate of return of 11.5 per cent on the team alone.
That is a much richer valuation than Forbes had granted and a much better return as a result. The magazine had ranked the franchise 27th with a team value of $337-million.
Losing a lot is not helping, but it's not holding the Jays back too much either. The Jays rank ahead of the Washington Nationals, Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals, teams that have been more successful on the field in recent years.