The Braves made their quarterly earnings release call on Wednesday morning. BravesVision isn’t printing money, but they’re still better off producing things in-house than they were with the previous TV arrangement. The Battery is strong, but they appear to be growing into the real estate that they have. They had two postseason games in September, so ticket sales went up. But overall, it’s kind of a meh three months.
Before we dive in, a brief aside:
This post is not financial advice, and shouldn’t
be confused as such. Battery Power, SBNation and their parent company, and I don’t care how you invest. I don’t hold a financial position of the Braves, whether that’s buying or holding or selling. We cover all aspects of the Braves here, and we’re walking through these results to get a sense of the financial health of the franchise. I don’t have a take on the stock. And even if I did, you shouldn’t take my advice anyway. I’ve made every bad investing decision at least twice over the course of my lifetime. Ok, back to the news.
Top Line Numbers
- The Braves returned to the postseason and saw a 14% increase in average attendance per regular season home game in the third quarter from the prior year period.
- Baseball revenue increased 4% in the third quarter of 2026 compared to the prior year primarily driven by increases in baseball event revenue and retail and licensing revenue.
- Mixed-Use Development revenue increased 7% for the third quarter of 2026 primarily due to an increase in rental income driven by increases in tenant recoveries and new lease agreements.
- Debt increased $20 million in the third quarter primarily due to net borrowings on the League wide credit facility to support working capital, partially offset by net payments on the TeamCo revolver.
- Booked a 51.1 million dollar loss January through September 2026 versus a profit of 36.2 million in January through September 2025
Umm yikes, y’all. Going into the lockout and new CBA negotiations, I didn’t expect the Braves to confess to having blowout numbers. And they surely didn’t. The on-field personnel payroll increased by 43 million last year, but that’s just about half of the shortfall. Ticket sales were basically flat when you consider that the Braves had one more home game and two postseason games in Q3.
The first two playoff games were underwhelming
Ticket sales were up slightly. The total revenue is up 7 percent. But that’s with one additional home game and two postseason games. My guess is that Games 1 and 2 of the NL Wild Card Series versus the Phillies brought in about 4 million dollars apiece. That’s more in line with what they get for a regular season game. It’s not overstating it that the Atlanta Braves gave up 7-8 million dollars total to deliver two postseason games in the middle of weekdays with weather in the high 80s and low 90s. I can’t blame Atlanta for staying home. I built a mini-vacation around this playoff series, but not everyone can do that. There is also the issue that even with the increases in season ticket packages and 18 more wins and a NL East Division title, the Braves weren’t able to pay it off with more revenue.
The City Connect uniforms are amazing
However, the retail and licensing part of the house exploded this year. Revenue from this line is up 25 percent over the previous quarter and 21 percent from last year. They really did an excellent job with this City Connect uniform. Most other teams are rolling with some very generic, AI-non-inspired dreck. They honestly looked like something that a movie whose producers wanted to put in a baseball uniform but couldn’t afford the licensing costs. The Braves however, really did combine the old and the new with a big shoutout to Ted Turner. I keep waiting for these to drop in price. Now I understand why they aren’t.
Terry McGuirk is pleased with the roster
While there were no shoutouts to Fangraphs or professed admiration of some stats over others, McGuirk seems very content with the state of the organization. In his words:
I want to be clear about how I see this season. It was real progress. We went from missing the playoffs to winnings the division and a postseason series. Our core is in place. Our young players go better and our new manager’s first year was a success. Our minor league system is stocked with future major league talent. We’re pleased with where this organization is headed and will keep working to build on it in 2027.… Coming into this season, we made a deliberate decision to invest in our roster and our major league payroll was meaningfully higher as a result.
This doesn’t sound like someone who is getting ready to turn over the roster. And I got the sense on the call that he was not looking to move on from Tim Hyers, either. We reportedly got confirmation of that hunchearlier. They did increase payroll this season. But they basically made the team deeper and not necessarily gave it a higher ceiling. (which hey, I wanted a deeper bench too and have been griping about it for years) But outside of the higher salary absorbed in a trade for Utility Gold Glove Mauricio Dubon, they didn’t get much return from Ha-Seong Kim, Aaron Bummer, Mike Yastrzemski, and Joel Payamps.
BravesVision is proving to be a great move
The Braves owning their own network was always the way forward. This year they are trailing their media revenue by 8 percent from last year. There are a few things to consider here, though. The payouts that the Braves receive for their product differ from last year. They used to basically get monthly payments while the season was on, but nothing in the offseason. Now the payments come directly from advertisers, and those will be spread out over the course of the year. Another thing that will spread out over the course of the year are payments from cable companies. They can offer 12 months of programming, and they recently told us what that would be.
The Braves led in league in streaming viewers this season. I take that to mean that more people are buying Braves.TV versus any other
Tax bill should go down next year
The Braves, as a public company, have tax issues around employees making a million plus a year. Which is not great, considering they have about 25-30 of them. But Braves Development Company President and CEO Mike Plant said that there is pending legislation to correct this. “We are aware of the recent legislation introduced and continue to lobby and have had discussion with a number of interested parties, including members and leadership of the House and Senate administration and Treasury” said Plant. I believe this might be the legislation he is referring to here. The Braves have been very mysterious about this and it’s hard to tell. They’re not talking about the CBA negotiations either. Because, yeah.
Mostly not great news
The Braves had a lot more game attendance this year. BravesVision is trucking along. Mixed-use development aka The Battery and Pennant Park is still very profitable. But any revenue growth in the real estate portion would come with more debt and scrutiny. But they are making a very good argument about the idea of teams spending money (in the form of higher player salaries) to make more money. The Braves can’t really hide from these numbers, unless you consider how they report BravesVision numbers. But they will go on the report sometime.
