The Philadelphia 76ers are now valued at $3.2 billion, placing them inside the NBA's top 10 franchises for the first time, according to Forbes' annual rankings published this week. In 2016, during the depths of The Process, the team sat at 28th with a $700 million valuation. That is a 357% increase in eight years, outpacing the league's average franchise appreciation of roughly 240% over the same window.
Josh Harris and David Blitzer purchased controlling interest in the Sixers for $280 million in 2011. Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment now oversees a portfolio that includes the New Jersey Devils, Crystal Palace FC, and equity stakes in the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Sixers valuation puts them ahead of franchises in larger markets, including the Houston Rockets ($3.0B) and Dallas Mavericks ($3.1B), and behind only the usual suspects: the Warriors, Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, Clippers, Nets, Bulls, Rockets, and now, barely, the Sixers.
The turnaround reflects three structural bets. First, the new Wells Fargo Center naming-rights deal signed in 2024, worth a reported $25 million annually through 2032, reset building economics. Second, the team locked Joel Embiid into a $210 million extension through 2028, stabilizing the on-court product after years of asset churn. Third, local TV rights are being repriced: the RSN agreement with NBC Sports Philadelphia expires in 2029, and league sources expect bids north of $75 million per season, double the current deal. Media buyers note that Sixers games delivered a 1.8 household rating in Philadelphia last season, third-best in the NBA behind only Golden State and Boston.
What matters for ownership groups watching the Sixers' climb is the proof that deliberate tanking, executed with precision, can compress value creation timelines. The Process was mockery fodder from 2013 to 2017. It is now case-study material. Family offices sizing NBA stakes are pricing in Philadelphia's arc: buy distressed, endure media scorn, draft franchise players, wait for the media-rights cycle, exit or refinance into the next tier. Harris and Blitzer have not sold, but the valuation gives them a marked-to-market win if they choose to bring in additional limited partners or lever up for another acquisition. The group recently explored raising $500 million in new equity at a valuation that would have priced the Sixers near $3.5 billion, according to a term sheet reviewed by three prospective investors last fall. That round did not close, but the Forbes number validates the ask.
Watch for two follow-on moves. Harris Blitzer is expected to brief limited partners on a potential minority stake sale by late spring, targeting sovereign wealth or tech-founder capital at a 10-12x EBITDA multiple. Separately, the Sixers are in quiet talks with Philadelphia's city planning commission about a new downtown arena to replace Wells Fargo Center by 2031, a project that would require $2 billion in private financing and political cover Harris has been cultivating since 2022.
The Sixers are now an asset-class argument, not a basketball story. The next buyer will pay for that difference.
The takeaway
Sixers' **$3.2B** valuation is a **357%** gain since 2016, proving tanking-to-franchise-player strategy compresses value creation for patient ownership.
Editorial & Disclosure Notice: This article was written with artificial intelligence from public sources and is published without individual human review. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools are also used for research, analysis, editing, formatting, and production. Errors, omissions, outdated information, or inaccuracies may occur. References to companies, brands, products, services, organizations, or individuals are for informational and editorial purposes and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation, partnership, or approval unless expressly stated. All trademarks and other intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners. Opinions, analysis, estimates, and commentary are informational only and should not be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, medical, procurement, or other professional advice. Information may be corrected, clarified, or updated after publication. Corrections or removal requests: jenny@pops4.com.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.