Giddyap, pony!: Pat Bowlen bought the Broncos for $78 million. The team's now worth $2.6 billion. Hmmm.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS BIZ

A trick question, sports fans: When is a $2.6 billion asset actually worth $2.6 billion?

Answer: When you sell it.

Until then, owning something with value--your home, let's say--may provide some psychological comfort in that you know you've got some equity socked away. But until you monetize your investment, it sort of just... sits there. Plus, you have to shovel the sidewalk.

Imagine, though, being one of a few people rewarded in life with the gift of ownership in a National Football League team. There are only 32 of them in the world. Even the runt of the litter (the Buffalo Bills) is worth $1.6 billion. Every team gets showered with more than $250 million annually in shared national media-rights money. These payments happen whether you're an out-and-out mogul like Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke or an oddball renegade like Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis, who has zero industrial-grade management experience in any business other than professional football. Basically, you can't lose.

One attractive entrant in the category is the Denver Broncos Football Club, which ranks 11th among NFL teams with estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, per a September 2017 estimate published by Forbes. If the Broncos' $411 million in 2017 revenue was included in this magazine's listing of Colorado's top private companies, the team would rank No. 11, just below Mike Shaw Management Inc.

We point this out because the rancor now swirling around the Broncos raises the possibility that somebody whose last name is not Bowlen (or Bowlen Wallace) could end up owning the team.

There. We said it.

Of course, everybody knows the succession plan dictates otherwise. The ownership trust created by owner Pat Bowlen, who stepped down from his CEO post in 2014 after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, makes it clear the intent is to keep control within Bowlen's family, specifically by identifying one of Bowlen's seven children as a successor.

Joe Ellis, the organization's CEO and one of three trustees charged with determining who emerges as Pat Bowlen's successor, has been consistent in explaining the plan. When we interviewed Ellis in the fall of 2016 for a ColoradoBiz CEO of the Year profile, here's what he said: "We still are a ways away from a child being named, but we hope that as required by league rules, one child will emerge to fill their father's shoes. Those are large shoes to fill, but this is what Pat's plan was."

Ellis is hewing to the same message today...