Investors — and baseball fans — will be able to buy and sell shares of stock in the Atlanta Braves next year under an unusual plan unveiled Thursday by team owner Liberty Media.

Liberty, a publicly traded company with a range of media and entertainment assets, said it will create a tracking stock that will provide a way to invest in the Braves’ financial performance separate from the rest of the conglomerate.

The Colorado-based company will continue to control the Braves under the plan, but the new stock — expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange in the first half of next year — will make the Braves one of the few sports franchises with publicly listed shares allowing for direct investment.

“It’s a Brave new world,” Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said in announcing the plan to investors.

The tracking stock, designated as the “Liberty Braves Group,” will include the Braves and the team’s interests in the new SunTrust Park and adjacent mixed-use development in Cobb County.

J.C. Bradbury, a sports economist at Kennesaw State University, said some investors could view the stock as a play on the real-estate project and others could see it as an extension of being a fan.

“Fans could say, ‘Hey, I own a piece of the Braves,’” Bradbury said.

Liberty said its current shareholders will get corresponding shares in the new Braves stock and two other tracking stocks also announced Thursday.

Liberty said it also plans to raise $200 million from a rights offering of additional Braves shares. That money will be used in large part to repay approximately $165 million borrowed by the Braves from Liberty for the stadium project, the company said.

Initial share prices haven’t been determined.

The Braves have been part of publicly traded companies for decades — first Turner Broadcasting, then Time Warner and since 2007 Liberty Media. But this will be the first time the Braves have been a stand-alone stock, meaning more extensive financial disclosures about the team will be made to Wall Street and the public.

Among the few publicly traded sports franchises are basketball’s New York Knicks and hockey’s New York Rangers, both part of Madison Square Garden Co., and English soccer powerhouse Manchester United. Shares of the Green Bay Packers have long been publicly owned, but those are not tradeable and fall more in the category of fan support than investment.

Shares in baseball’s Cleveland Indians, basketball’s Boston Celtics and hockey’s Florida Panthers have been publicly traded in the past, but no longer are.

Long-time Braves season-ticket holder John Shafer said he would be interested in buying shares in the team.

“This would really give me and others an opportunity to be a part of the Braves organization,” Shafer said. “You’re not going to have a voice or anything like that, but it would be fun more than anything else. My investment would probably be minimal, but I would welcome the opportunity.”

Liberty Media, controlled by legendary dealmaker John Malone, is well known in the investment world for its complex financial maneuvers.

In addition to the Braves stock, the company plans a tracking stock tied to its 60-percent ownership stake in satellite radio provider Sirius XM and another tied to its stakes in Live Nation Entertainment and other assets.

The plans are subject to approval by Liberty Media shareholders and other conditions.

The Braves declined to comment on its owner’s plans.

David Damiani, a partner at Atlanta-based independent investment advisory firm Balentine, said tracking stocks are relatively rare, but allow companies to try to “unlock unrecognized value within the organization.”

“This is a classic example of the parts being greater than a whole,” he said.

Damiani said his firm doesn’t recommend specific stocks, but as a sports fan he’s intrigued by Liberty Media’s move.

“This is probably more a novelty than a pure long-term investment,” he said.

But Malone, Liberty’s chairman, said the financial potential of the Braves’ stadium and mixed-use development project shouldn’t be overlooked.

“Let’s don’t underestimate that this is a pretty material real-estate asset that is attached, which could get larger,” Malone said.

Liberty suggested the Braves are worth more than the $1.15 billion recently estimated by Forbes.

“Valuing teams is not a simple process,” Maffei said. “The numbers have gone up substantially recently. … Traditionally they have been valued at certain multiples of revenue … and with our new stadium we’re going to substantially expand, we believe, the revenues we have as a team.”

Maffei said Liberty’s goal is to reduce the discount at which it believes its stock currently trades in relation to the value of underlying assets, as well as to provide greater investor choice and to raise capital in a targeted way.

A tracking stock isn’t quite a spinoff where a new publicly traded company is created, experts said. The stock is still joined with that of the parent company, which maintains operational control it wouldn’t have if it created a completely new public firm. But it allows investors to more closely follow the performance of the business unit separate from the overarching corporation.

A company also would take a tax hit in spinning off a company that it wouldn’t incur by creating a tracking stock.