For a hapless franchise, the Chicago Cubs look to be on their way to becoming the most expensive baseball team ever sold.

On opening day of the 2007 season—which featured a characteristic Cubs loss—news broke that Second City real estate baron Sam Zell would purchase Tribune Co., the team’s owner, for $8.2 billion and put the storied baseball franchise up for sale.

Zell’s reasons? As owner of a stake in the Cubs’ crosstown rivals, the White Sox (who won the World Series in 2005), he’d be in violation of Major League Baseball rules. And besides, he doesn’t like baseball.

Analysts were quick to offer predictions of how much the Cubs might sell for. Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, says that the team could go for between $600 million and $700 million. Other analysts and prospective buyers pushed the top of that range to $800 million and even $1 billion. A price in that territory would top the record $660 million that the Boston Red Sox fetched in 2002.

However, the potential upside for any would-be Cubs owner “has been undermined by the recent large contracts they’ve signed,” says Zimbalist, referring to the $300 million the club spent on personnel in the off-season. “That’s just bad baseball sense. You’re putting a burden on anybody who buys that team.”

The Cubs, who haven’t won a World Series since 1908, will be sold in the fourth quarter of 2007. The deal will also include Tribune Co.’s 25 percent stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago, a regional sports network.

While it’s widely expected that Wrigley Field will be part of the deal, Tribune Co.’s press release did not explicitly include the legendary ballpark in the sale. Last season, Wrigley Field had the third-highest attendance-to-capacity ratio, behind only Fenway Park, where the Red Sox play, and Busch Stadium, home to the St. Louis Cardinals. Without Wrigley, the value of the deal could fall by as much as $200 million, says Rodney Fort, a professor of economics at Washington State University.

The ego factor—how much a new owner is willing to pay for the access to politicians and businesspeople that comes with owning a team—is also likely to affect the final cost. Zimbalist says the perceived value of this intangible asset could send the final price tag for the Cubs toward the $1 billion mark.

Since most sports franchises are either privately held or are smaller divisions of much larger businesses, it’s hard to find information on their finances. In its annual valuation of baseball teams last week, Forbes reported that the Cubs were worth $592 million—in line with the low end of predictions of the team’s sales price—and estimated Wrigley’s value at about $90 million.

When Major League Baseball opened its books in late 2001 while debating whether to contract the league, it claimed that the Cubs’ stadium-associated revenue was about $30 million.

“The Forbes list often underprices how much teams are actually sold for, but it gives a rational estimate of what a franchise might be worth,” says Brad Humphreys, an associate professor in the department of recreation, sport, and tourism at the University of Illinois.

Regardless, if a prospective buyer pays anything close to the range mentioned above, Tribune Co. will have made a killing on its initial investment: The media conglomerate paid just $20.5 million for the team in 1981.

As for Cubs fans, they’ll likely have to wait until a new owner takes over to end their misery. With the 2007 season only three weeks old, the Lovable Losers are already in last place in their division.