Mega Millions Jackpot and the MLB Team Winners Should All Try to Buy

The Mega Millions jackpot could top $600 million this week. What would you do if you won the whole thing? Quit your job and purchase an island? Donate it all to charity? Buy a warehouse and swim around in a sea of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck? 

As a sports fan, there are really only two answers: own a professional franchise or become the T. Boone Pickens of your alma mater. There is no third choice. 

Come to think of it, there may not be a first choice much longer.

Have you seen how much professional sports franchises cost these days? Just last week, Forbes released the list of current team values in Major League Baseball, ranking the Los Angeles Dodgers second at $1.4 billion.

This week, the Dodgers were purchased by Magic Johnson and Guggenheim Partners for a reported $2 billion, the most money ever spent on a professional sports franchise.

Let this soak into your new-found millions: the difference between what the Dodgers are reportedly worth and what the new owners will pay is nearly double what the Mega Millions winner will take home after taxes. 

If you wanted to buy the Dodgers with your jackpot winnings, you would be lucky to end up a minority owner with no more than 20 percent of the team. Jackpot winners are getting priced out of the dream of winning the lottery and using the money to irresponsibly purchase your favorite sports team! We can't let that happen. 

The jackpot is certain to rise before numbers are drawn, but the current estimation for a winning annuity is $405 million after federal taxes, if you're lucky enough to live in a state that doesn't tax on lottery winnings. New Jersey, where I live, taxes an additional 10.8 percent.

Fuggedabout owning a sports franchise with only $346 million in the bank. 

For the sake of easy math, let's move on with our working number at $400 million, giving us $5 million on the side to buy a decent house or two. 

According to Forbes, there are only four Major League Baseball franchises worth less than $400 million: the Kansas City Royals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics.

Of the remaining 26 Major League teams, another 11 are valued under $500 million, which means that 14 of baseball's 30 franchises are currently worth more than half a billion dollars. 

We're going to need to re-invest some of our lottery winnings in more lottery tickets.

Maybe not, if we play the game right. The most expensive team one can afford with the Mega Millions jackpot is Kansas City at $354 million, leaving close to $50 million for other costs. 

The Pirates payroll is 27^th in baseball at $45,630,000. If it wasn't for A.J. Burnett's contract, we could totally afford to buy the team and pay the players (for a year).

Not to mention, unlike Tampa or Oakland, Pittsburgh has a beautiful stadium, meaning we wouldn't need to dump any more money to build a new facility or, like Kansas City, spend millions on renovations. 

Pittsburgh is a great sports town with a ton of baseball tradition. If the Pirates ever get consistently good, the fans will come back. 

The real return on an investment in today's professional sports market is TV dollars.

Pittsburgh isn't exactly Los Angeles, New York or Philadelphia. These franchises are or will soon be printing their own money when it comes to TV revenue.

The reason the Dodgers are so valuable is in large part because of the new TV deals. The Phillies will be able to afford a rotation of All-Stars for many years to come after they cash in on their new TV deal. 

Still, some smaller markets have had success with TV deals that include ownership stakes in regional sports networks. Up to this point, we've gone on the assumption of 100 percent ownership in the team, which nobody would actually do. Certainly there would be a host of other owners involved with minority stake. 

From a business standpoint, owning a baseball team probably makes the most sense of any professional league in America. Baseball affords more opportunity to get a return on the investment at the gate, with 81 home games every season, compared to just eight home games in the NFL.

NFL charges an average of $77 per ticket, nearly triple the average ticket for MLB. The average attendance for an NFL game is 67,358, with no team averaging less than 49,251 fans last season. 

By comparison, the highest average attendance in MLB was 45,440, with the lowest bottoming out near a paltry 18,000 fans. Still, with an average attendance of 30,334 for MLB games and an average ticket price of $26.91, baseball took in close to $1.98 billion at the gate last season, compared to $1.32 billion for the NFL. 

Sure, the operating costs of keeping a stadium open 81 times compared to eight has to be higher, but those gate numbers didn't factor in the revenue teams also rake in on parking and concessions. 

Paying an NFL roster is usually more expensive than MLB. The NFL salary cap is around $120 million this season, a number exceeded by just six MLB franchises.

Yes, the NFL is making more money on national TV rights than any sports league has ever made, but baseball's TV dollars aren't far behind when considering the fees regional cable networks have been willing to pay for rights to games. How are the Dodgers worth more than two billion dollars? The next TV deal for Los Angeles could bring in as much as twice that.

Sure, the Lakers just signed a deal for $3 billion and the overhead for an NBA team with just 15 players and smaller, weather-independent facilities has to be less than a baseball team. The problem with the NBA is that the haves seem to have so much more than the have-nots (though the success of Oklahoma City is changing this perception).

In baseball, with all the money being thrown into TV rights (even the Astros are getting big money interest), it almost feels like MLB is made up of haves and slightly-less-haves.

True, there are other domestic sports leagues that have much cheaper teams than baseball. One could purchase a hockey team. One could certainly do that. (Note: I will not be that one.)

One could also purchase a soccer team and probably get a great deal on an MLS franchise.

Having said that, it makes much more sense to do what many American sports owners have done in the last 15 years and purchase an English Premier League team. 

I would purchase Everton. They need to sell, have a rich history with a dedicated fan base and they have a built-in relationship with American soccer fans. In 2010, Liverpool was purchased by New England Sports Ventures for 300 million British pounds, roughly $480 million. We could totally lowball an Everton bid. (Note: I am doing this if I win the Mega Millions. Don't tell the wife.) 

Still, domestically, the best bang for the buck seems to be baseball. While Tampa Bay has the most potential with the recent success of the Rays, the fan base is consistently non-existent.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is a sleeping giant.

Of course the sensible thing would be to invest all the money and create trust funds for the kids. Maybe we could even splurge for that private island. But what fun is that? At some point in every boys life he imagines himself as a pirate.

With the Mega Millions, you could own them all.