Why Derek Jeter may be worth $1b to the Yankees

Kevin Chupka
·Executive Producer/Writer

When Derek Jeter ends his playing career this Sunday he will have collected somewhere around $268 million in salary from the New York Yankees organization. His former manager Joe Torre told Yahoo's Katie Couric he will certainly leave a hole in the team and in the clubhouse. But what about a dollar value?

It’s difficult to put a final number on Jeter's value, but Yahoo Finance tried anyway.

Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees bowed out in style with a game-winning walk-off single to cap his last game at Yankee Stadium. Chris Mad Dog Russo from SiriusXM joins MoneyBeat. Photo: Getty.
Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees bowed out in style with a game-winning walk-off single to cap his last game at Yankee Stadium. Chris Mad Dog Russo from SiriusXM joins MoneyBeat. Photo: Getty.

According to sports research firm Navigate, a conservative estimate for Jeter's value is $500 million. Navigate started with the $5.6 billion the Yankees have made in profit since 1995, and gave Jeter credit for at least 9% of that total based on his share of all Yankee players' salaries over that time period. Jeter's share amounts to about $500 million.

But, Navigate admits that's not the whole picture. Jeter could have as much as twice the impact on the brand as the average player, placing his value as high as $1 billion. But even that is subjective, and doesn’t take into account Jeter’s contribution to the $4 billion value of the team’s YES TV network, which was started in 2002.

What isn’t as subjective is Jeter’s impact on ticket sales this year.

Derek Jeter capped his Yankee Stadium farewell with a game-winning single in the bottom of the ninth inning, the latest, and perhaps last, storybook moment of his charmed and illustrious career. (Sept. 26)
Derek Jeter capped his Yankee Stadium farewell with a game-winning single in the bottom of the ninth inning, the latest, and perhaps last, storybook moment of his charmed and illustrious career. (Sept. 26)

Sports economist and professor Victor Matheson of Holy Cross notes that Yankees' attendance is up 5% this year -- both for home games and when the team is on the road. The Yankees' results on the field were lackluster at best this season, so it’s not a stretch to attribute that growth in ticket sales to Jeter’s goodbye tour.

5% growth across all 162 games works out to somewhere north of 300,000 extra tickets sold, thanks - at least in part - to "The Captain."

The Yankees' average ticket price at home is $51.55. That works out to a jump of more than $7.5 million this year over last year.

Forbes contributor Patrick Rishe crunched some other numbers earlier this year:

- The nominal growth of the Yankees value was $2.06 billion from the time Jeter entered the big leagues through last year.

- While Jeter can’t take all the credit for that, he needs only to be responsible for about 14% of it to make his pay checks worth it for the Yanks.

While it may be up for debate through much of the country whether Jeter deserves 14% of the credit, the Yankee fans across the greater New York area surely wouldn't question that he's worth at least that.

As for the future, economist David Berri told Yahoo Finance the day-to-day impact would probably not be felt. No player, no matter how popular or prolific a career they may have had, has that much of an effect.

What really drives a team, of course, is wins. A new and younger short stop could very well help provide more wins than an aging Jeter, and so the Yankees, if they tally more W’s next year could in fact be better off without number 2. But I doubt it.