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Smith's MLB push hedges Jazz valuation exposure and leverages existing Mammoth infrastructure while expansion comps reset.
$1.66 billion
Jazz owner and Mammoth principal didn't specify bid timing…
32 teams
on a slow clock since 2019
$935 million
through 2025
14-16x revenue
in the Suns and Mavericks sales
Ryan Smith told reporters he'll pursue Major League Baseball expansion for Utah with an "aggressive" posture. The $1.66 billion Jazz owner and Mammoth principal didn't specify bid timing or stadium site, but the declaration lands six months after NBA team sale comps turned sideways and two quarters after local attendance data suggested his basketball asset needs a complementary revenue stream.
MLB has floated expansion to 32 teams on a slow clock since 2019. Commissioner Rob Manfred prefers Nashville and a southwestern market, possibly Las Vegas or Charlotte. Utah wasn't in the initial target set, but Smith's entry reshapes the conversation because he already owns the venue infrastructure, the sponsorship relationships, and the regional sports network backbone that new-market bidders spend three years assembling. His Delta Center renovation runs $935 million through 2025. Adding a baseball tenant spreads that capital across two anchor properties and gives Mammoth's sales team a second premium inventory window from April through September.
The intelligence play is valuation insurance. NBA franchises last traded at 14-16x revenue in the Suns and Mavericks sales. Those multiples assumed sustained media-rights growth and Chinese market expansion. Both assumptions have softened. MLB expansion franchises are expected to price near $2.2-2.5 billion based on private soundings, roughly in line with what Smith paid for the Jazz in 2020. If he secures a team at that number and basketball valuations compress another ten percent, he's diversified his Utah sports exposure without levering the existing entity. If basketball valuations recover, he owns two appreciating assets in a market where he's already solved the political and real estate frictions that kill most expansion bids.
Utah's fundamentals support the move but don't guarantee it. Salt Lake City MSA population sits at 1.26 million, smaller than Nashville's 2.01 million but comparable to Milwaukee and Cincinnati. The state's corporate sponsorship base is thin outside Smith's own portfolio companies and a handful of regional banks. MLB will want evidence of 25,000-30,000 season-ticket commitments and a stadium plan that doesn't require public bonds, which Utah voters have historically rejected. Smith's advantage is speed: he can present a shovel-ready proposal while rival bids are still assembling ownership syndicates and negotiating land parcels.
Two near-term signals matter. First, whether Smith joins MLB's expansion committee exploratory meetings, which Manfred has scheduled loosely for mid-2025 after the Athletics' Las Vegas stadium situation clarifies. Second, whether Mammoth begins quiet site acquisition near the Delta Center or in the underdeveloped corridor west of the airport, where land prices are 40% cheaper than downtown parcels and zoning is cleaner. If Smith is serious, trucks start moving dirt in Q3 2025, regardless of MLB's official timeline.
The comment itself functions as a market signal to other would-be bidders: Utah is now a competitive process, not an open field, and the incumbent has a cost-of-capital advantage no outside group can match.
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