The NY Islanders are suddenly worth 3 billion and sold an equity stake of franchise

The New York Islanders may have missed the playoffs two straight seasons, but apparently that hasn't hurt their value very much.

According to Sportico, the Islanders have reached an agreement to sell roughly 15% of the franchise to a group of investors at a whopping $3 billion valuation. The deal still needs NHL approval and won't change the team's day-to-day operations, with Scott Malkin remaining the controlling owner.

Still. Three billion dollars.

It's a pretty remarkable number when you remember where this franchise was when Malkin and Jon Ledecky bought the Islanders in 2014. They paid $485 million. A little more than a decade later, the valuation attached to this latest investment is more than six times that amount.

Winning hasn't driven all of that growth, either.

UBS Arena changed the business side of the Islanders. The $1.1 billion building opened in 2021 and finally gave the franchise the permanent home it had been searching for since leaving Nassau Coliseum. The development around Belmont Park has continued since then, and UBS Arena has become an important concert venue in addition to hosting Islanders games.

There's another interesting comparison. In 2023, Oliver Haarmann purchased a 10% stake in the Islanders at a reported $1.75 billion valuation. Three years later, this latest investment would value them at $3 billion.

That's quite a jump.

Of course, Islanders fans aren't going to celebrate franchise valuations like Stanley Cups. This is still a team that has missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons and has plenty to prove under Mathieu Darche and Pete DeBoer.

But the organization looks very different than it did a decade ago. It has a new arena, a growing surrounding development and Matthew Schaefer as the young face of the franchise.

Now it apparently has a $3 billion price tag attached to it.

For a franchise that spent decades dealing with ownership uncertainty and arena questions, that's a transformation nobody should overlook.

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