Atlanta's Struggles on The Field Haven't Tanked $BATRA Revenues — Yet

Despite a disappointing start to the season, Atlanta Braves Holdings is still raking in revenue — for now.

(For those that don’t know, my day job is working in finance. While I’m currently working with SBA borrowers in my current role, after graduating from Auburn University with my MBA, I spent years in commercial lending and corporate finance. It’s rare that I get to combine both my professional career and my passion for baseball for a newsletter, but this one was obvious.)

The start of the season was a nightmare for Atlanta - beginning with an 0-7 West Coast road trip, they never recovered, finishing the month of June with a 38-45 record on the season.

The team’s underperformance didn’t tank the team’s earnings, however. Atlanta Braves Holdings (trading under $BATRA) announced a profitable second quarter of $312M in revenues (up 10% YOY) and a staggering 44% improvement in OIBDA.¹

Here’s what happened financially and what company officials said about it.

It’s an even comparison between years

As Atlanta Braves Holdings (ABH) officials reminded everyone on today’s investor call, their business is extremely seasonal - it’s based around the baseball schedule.

This time, however, things worked out in simplicity’s favor.

As is standard in quarterly earnings reports, Quarter Two of 2025 is being compared to the same quarter of the previous year. In a convenient bit of scheduling, both quarters had exactly 40 home baseball games, so there’s no per-game adjustment needed to the numbers to allow for a direct comparison.

(Going forward, we’ll refer to these two periods ‘2Q25’ & ‘2Q24’)

So, what’s the top-line takeaway here?

The Braves played the same number of games and made more money.

That additional money primarily came from a growth in the value of the streaming deal and higher prices for season tickets and hospitality packages, offset slightly by a decrease in concession sales.

Let’s take these one at a time. As ABH officials noted in the call, they packaged the streaming rights into the television deal with FanDuel Sports Network for the first time, supplementing that with a simulcast agreement with Gray Media to broadcast 15 games for free over-the-air across the Southeast.

These two deals resulted in a 14% increase in broadcast revenue, from $70.95M to $81M. I found it interesting that an official, in response to an analyst's question, confirmed that there has not been cannibalization of the broadcast numbers - i.e., adding the streaming option has not caused a significant number of viewers to abandon one viewing method for another, but rather increased viewership.

(It’s almost like the easier you make it to watch the games, the more folks will watch the games. Groundbreaking.)

ABH officials declined to give exact figures on broadcast consumption, referring analysts to FanDuel Sports Network for further details.

The other portion of the revenue increase can be attributed to premium spaces and season tickets. While attendance was technically down in Q2, negatively impacting concession revenue, ABH officials cited the duo of “contractual increases on season tickets and existing sponsorship contracts, as well as new premium seating and sponsorship agreements” as a driver of the improved revenue. Based on the significantly lower attendance we’ve seen on television post-trade deadline, it’ll be interesting to see if this trend continues for Q3.

“Other income” also saw a lift thanks to a concert that was held at Truist Park, increasing from $4M in 2Q24 to $7.3M in 2Q25.

The Battery Atlanta keeps growing

All baseball revenue earned by Altanta Braves Holdings, which came out to $287M in 2Q2025, is subject to MLB’s Revenue Sharing program. 48% of local revenues, which includes gate receipts, local television, concessions, etc, is put into a pool. National revenue - the broadcasting deals, league-wide sponsorships, etc - is added to the pool and then the money is evenly distributed to all 30 teams at a rate of roughly 3.3% per team.

Obviously, this means some teams, “payees”, will receive more than they put in and some teams will receive less, called the “payors”.

Atlanta is a payor.

But they also don’t share any of the money that they make from The Battery Atlanta, which is classified as “Mixed-use development” and not baseball-related.

And buddy, business is booming.

The Battery Atlanta and other real estate holdings contributed $25.1M to Atlanta Braves Holdings in 2Q25, up a staggering 49% from 2Q24’s $16.9M. There are a few reasons for this that ABH officials gave on the call - the acquisition of Pennant Park came online and was contributing rental income to the financials, as well as new lease commitments for expanded office space in The Battery Atlanta. Shake Shack, for instance, not only opened their new retail location but also a corporate support and training center in 2Q25.

And again, none of that $25.1M needs to be shared with Major League Baseball or the other 29 teams.

The mixed-use development income of $25.1M is still dwarfed by baseball revenue of $287M, but it helps. That’s another “Atlanta max” contract of $22M AAV funded by just one quarter of The Battery’s operations.

What will they do with the money?

One of my favorite questions came from Barton Crockett, Managing Director of Rosenblatt Securities.

(Remember, these are not baseball people; they’re financial analysts, so none of these questions were baseball-specific or detailed about baseball operations.)

He asked the ABH representatives details about the streaming arrangement and then segued into a question about whether these profits presented “an opportunity to reinvest some of this growth and cash flow into payroll or the team.”

After someone else addressed the streaming component, here’s what ABH Chairman Terry McGuirk said about spending money and investing in putting a winning product on the field:

“Will those dollars be reinvested in payroll? I’d start off (by) saying that we have been a top ten payroll team for some period of time. I see us continuing to maybe move up that ladder - you know, we had dry powder in our arsenal for the trade deadline this year for payroll. Our threshold for investment there was, basically, that investment either needed to move us towards a playoff position this year or help us dramatically in ‘26. Our limited activity during that period sort of reflected the inability of the market to meet those two requirements.”

McGuirk continued, explaining that they’re painfully aware of the on-the-field performance of the team, presenting his thoughts on what happened to the Atlanta Braves in 2025.

“We’re disappointed with the year. There’s some underperformance, but the majority of it is injuries and missing players. Everyone is back for spring training ‘26 (and) we expect to have a team that can - you know, earlier this year, we were a favorite to potentially be in the World Series this year. I think we will line up in that kind of a mode next spring. We will take a very hard look at the team and at everything that contributes to winning and losing during this offseason. Of course, this is not the time to comment on those things. We know what our mandate is, and investment in the team is part of that.”

We’ll do more deep dives into the potential directions the team can go this offseason a bit later in the summer.

Other points of interest to me

Let’s run through some of these quickly:

• ABH’s cash on hand - the amount of cash held by the company dropped from $245M to just $96M, mainly attributed to the purchase of Pennant Park and other capital expenditures. Nothing to worry about, but I found that interesting.

• ABH Debt increased - but in my opinion, it’s a good thing. The debt increased by about $3.5M, to $703M, but over two-thirds (~$482M) of that is related to The Battery Atlanta. That’s good debt to have! It’s long-term debt tied to an appreciating asset that generates cash flow, with a lot of it being independent of the team and the season (the office space). By contrast, baseball debt is just $223M and actually dropped slightly.

• OIBDA went up 44% - I need you to know that this is amazing growth. This isn’t normal, this is special. While it won’t be as high later in the year as baseball revenue takes attendance hits down the stretch, you still need to understand that the business of the Atlanta Braves is incredibly strong.

1. OIBDA stands for Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization - it’s a way to look at what they’re realizing before the adjustments are applied to account for the remaining value of the real estate, etc. It’s not a standard measure, but it works here.