Multi-Club ownership. Just the mention of this concept leads to blood boiling.
UEFA’s latest benchmarking report in late 2022 went into a lot of detail on this topic and how it’s shaping the landscape of global and European football. And after reading that full report, I came to one conclusion- this is a trend that is undeniably here to stay.
More than 180 clubs around the world were part of a multi-club investment structure at the end of 2022, a 450% increase from the 40 registered in 2012.But even that is likely far from reality in 2024.
Sport Business, in collaboration with CIES Sports Intelligence, claimed that at the end of 2023, over 301 clubs had been identified as being part of a multi-club ownership group.
“We’re going to be continuously adding resources. We’ve talked about having a multi-club model. I would love to continue to build out the footprint.”
Todd Boehly, owner of Chelsea football club said this all way back in 2022.
Redbull, The City Football Group? They’re just the tip of the iceberg. They may represent a rather large tip, but they’re existence is an indicator of a lot of things.
The appetite to tap into a sport that has billions of built in fans, revenue streams and commercial sponsorships is huge. That’s the most obvious one.
The integrity of the game at hand is becoming more and more questionable as conflicts of interest, accusations of market manipulation and much more are bound to arise. Those are the most threatening one.
A threat led by America
Kidding.
But that brings us to the question of the day- what’s the deal with multiclub ownership?
MCO groups are the talk of the town lately. For good reason, too. But before we go into details on some real world examples, it’s best to get some definitions out the way.
Table of Contents
What’s is Multi Club Ownership
So, what is multi-club ownership?
I guess there are probably many definitions for what this is. But for the purposes of today’s video, we’ll lean on UEFA’s definition.
“Multi-cub ownership is a situation where a party exerts control and / or decisive influence over more than one club”.
This is not to be confused with multi-club investment:
“A situation where a party has investment interests in more than one club (without exerting control or influence).”
Similar, but not really the same thing.
The hub of MCO groups lies in Europe, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. However, while the vast majority of teams in MCOs originate from Europe, several of these organizations hold investments in clubs outside of Europe. A team in Brazil, a team in Austria, a team in New York, a team in Germany. And this is nowhere near the most diverse combination.
I fell I should say at this point that MCO and MCIs are nothing new at all. ENIC Group– yes the same organisation that owns Tottenham Hotspur held large ownership of several club all the way back in the late 90s. This portfolio included six separate clubs in 2002- Tottenham Hotspur (29.9%), Rangers F.C. (25.1%), SK Slavia Prague (96.7%), AEK Athens F.C. (47%), Vicenza Calcio (99.9%) and FC Basel (50%) all the way back in the late 90s.
But the landscape has certainly changed since then.
So, Why? Why the sudden boom in wanting to own several football teams? Why do organisations so badly want to enter every market that they possibly can? Well, a few reasons.
The most obvious being networking. By participating in this sort of model, what you get is a network of organisations that can all tap into each others resources and insight, and all become stronger.
The first division top dog is able to assist the smaller league side with business intelligence, strategy and systems. The smaller team in a national third division, might have ties to hidden gems that would never fall under the radar of Champions League regular.
Players themselves have access to a global network, giving them a more define path and goal to work towards. Your club plays in Ghana but is part of an MCO that has a team in Italy- a tangible pipeline now exists.
The networking and idea generation is especially the case when it comes to foreign, non-European investors. In 2022, out of all of UEFA’s MCO groups, a third of them have roots stemming from America- 27 out of 82.
Americans have been in the European football scene for decades, but things have gone into overdrive lately.
Many believe that this uptick is in large part thanks to the cease in sponsorship from China. Chinese investors poured over billions into European football over the last decade or so, but were forced to stop thank to Government mandates in China restricting several investment categories to within Chines Borders. This left a gap in the market.
Back to America though- American Sports gets a lot of flak from non-Americans who do not understand the culture. It’s too loud. It’s too boisterous and in your face. Why is everyone yelling? Why is it called football, when they are not only using their hands, but also holding an egg?
However, for all the flak that it gets, those in charge of the various games in the states are doing something right. Many of those investing in European football have been successful before looking abroad.
This inevitably brings us to another point- the price to enter the European Football market. It’s not a hell of a lot, by comparison.
Fenway Sports Group technically isn’t a multi-club ownership group, as they only have one football club under their umbrella, but they are multi-sports team organisation.
Liverpool, The Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins and several other subsidiaries in Sports and Entertainment.
Back in 2010, they bought Liverpool for roughly $349 Million dollars. That’s a huge sum. But it’s almost half of the $660 Million that they paid for the Boston Red Soxx in 2002, almost a decade before that.
And look at what FSG has been able to do with Liverpool. It’s widely documented that Liverpool have taken a Moneyball approach to their scouting and recruitment. Numbers and advanced analytics do not lie. Boston Red Sox have won 4 World Series titles through this approach. And Liverpool haven’t been too shabby themselves over the past 10 years.
The Reds were only able to latch on to this philosophy through their ownership model.
Additionally, RedBird Capital Partners bought a $750 million dollar stake in FSG back in 2021. RedBird own AC Milan and Toulouse FC. Partially Liverpool too.
Seattle Sounders are another example of a team that has benefitted greatly from being part of an ownership structure that spans several sports teams. Minority ownership to this club comes in the form of The Paul Allen Trust, who own the Seattle Seahawks.
Founded in 2007, the Sounders enjoyed a meteoric rise to the very top of the MLS, becoming MLS champions in 2016. They were helped by a lot of things along the way by the Estate of Paul Allen-minority owners of the Seattle Sounders, but full owners of the Seattle Seahawks.
Being able to lean on the marketing, sales and customer service knowledge of an NFL powerhouse helped quite a bit.
Arsenal and Manchester United are further examples of football clubs that are in an MCO group and whose owners drive decisions for several sporting organisations. Even Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS own 25% of Manchester United, as well as Nice.
Again, their models may not mirror those of an FSG with sharing of ideology and resources across the organisations. It’s just to point out that there are more connections than you might think between clubs at the highest level.
Plus, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle’s ownership have all indicated the multi-football club model is what they are aiming for.
So, as we can see MCOs exclusive to football might be new to some, but the philosophies behind their infrastructure are not new at all.
The main culprits
It’s estimated that there are 124 MCO group in global football at the moment, which means It’s impossible to look into all of them how they are performing.
So, instead, let’s take some time to look at 4 real world examples. And why not start off with the example that I’m sure a lot of people clicked on this video for- The City Football Group.
The City Football Group.
The City Football Group was founded back in 2013, following on from when the Abu Dhabu United Group purchased Manchester City in 2008.
It started with just one, and after 16 years, there are now 13 football clubs in the City Football group network. They span over 5 continents and 13 different countries and have thrown their eggs into multiple baskets within multiple varying environments.
The Crown Jewel of the Group, and the main indicator of the systems success in a lot of people’s eyes is none other than the best football team on the planet- Manchester City.
Manchester City are titans at this point. There is little to indicate that they are slowing down any time soon or that they aren’t set up for much much more success.
In 2008, Manchester City lost 8-1 to Middleborough, finishing 9th with 55 points- the most points they had ever been awarded since the inception of the Premier League.
They had been relegated twice, promoted twice, relegated again and promoted again between 1996 and 2002. Yet, fast forward to 2023 and they are the second most successful team in the history of English football and only the 2nd English football team to win a European treble.
They’ve gone from an overall revenue of £85 million per year in the 2007/08 season, to a record breaking £713 million in the 2022/23 season. And when I say record breaking, I mean in Premier League history.
The numbers are honestly just unreal.
And all of that. Absolutely every detail is thanks to the City Football Group.
Of course there are currently 115 reasons that allegedly suggest that something nefarious has been going on. But I’d like to remind everyone that these are all exactly what I just described them as- alleged.
Otherwise, CFG have gone about building up the rest of their portfolio in ways that have never seen before and have already seen success outside of their crown jewel.
At this current moment in in time, their most successful non- Manchester City team is Girona. The best team that Catalonia has to offer in 2024 and keeping up pace with Real Madrid at the very top of the table.
Bear in mind that this team was in the third tier in 2008 and the Segunda division as recently as 2022.
Last year they achieved their highest ever finish in La Liga with a 10th place finish and 49 points. They’ve already outdone that campaign and it’s still February.
How did they do this?
They have access to the greatest network in Football history- CFG. City have been loaning them players, letting them train at the Etihad during off-season and much much more. This was a lower league club with access to all of the infrastructure and resources of Manchester City.
Plus, Pep Guardiola’s Brother is running the whole operation. Knowing all of that, makes all of this make sense.
I made a detailed breakdown of Girona’s rise here, if you wanna check that out.
We can all wholeheartedly agree that CFG are a massive success, but it’s still probably worth pointing out that the group has never made a profit. Massive shout out to The Swiss Ramble, who makes some of the best reports on football finance on the internet. Easily digestible, with a sense of humor.
He went through CFGs financed over the past years so I didn’t have to and found that while Manchester City might be flourishing, the group as a whole still has a way to go. Nonetheless, you’d have to imagine that this will change if this keeps up.
Red Bull
Redbull is the other MCO that is quickly recognised as frontrunners in the realm.
Their model is slightly different to that of CFG. As can be seen through the fact that all of their teams are branded. RB Leipzig, Red Bull Salzburg, Red Bull Bragantino, Red Bull New York. There’s a trend here. Can’t seem to fathom what, though.
It’s probably the fact that Red Bull were not allowed to put a corporate entity in the name of their team due to strict DFB regulations. Rasenball Sport, or “Lawn Ball Sport”, has finished outside of the top 4 in the Bundesliga only once in the past 7 years. Not bad for a team that was founded in 2009.
However, the case of Red Bull is much more complicated than that of CFG or the others. Football forms a very small portion of their overall sporting portfolio. Formula 1, surfing, ice hockey, esports, and extreme sports such as wingsuit racing, rallycross racing and MotoGP form just the tip of the icebeg for them. They have invested in over 15 sports teams across 11 sports and always seem to be expanding.
And to differentiate themselves even more from their MCO contemporaries, it looks like gowth on a Sporting front is pretty much secondary to them. What really matters is marketing. How many people can they show their brand to and how many audiences can they reach?
I’m drinking Red Bull right now.
It’s well documented that the equivalent cost that Redbull would’ve had to pay to gain the marketing exposure that they’ve been able to generate themselves is obscene.
Think Verstappen, think cool, think speed, think Red Bull.
They really need to hire me for their next campaign. I’ll work for free, just give me more Red Bull.
However, it’s not just that. It’s undeniable that Red Bull have been very successful in nurturing talent amongst not only their portfolio clubs, but also within the entire European football landscape.
Dayot Upamecano, Dominik Szoboszlai, Naby Keïta, Amadou Haidara, Konrad Laimer, Sadio Mane and more have all thrived thanks to RB Salzburg infrastructure. All of them bar Mane went straight to Lepiz too.
At the same time, they are not well liked by most German football goers at all. Because why would they be?
German football is all about bringing the fans as close to the game as possible50+1 is a regulation in German football that requires members of a club to hold 50 percent plus one more vote of voting rights. This ensure that private investors can’t take over the club and make changes that go against the interest of the fans.
RB Leipzig follows the 50+1 rule on paper, but its ownership structure involves maintain a limited number of voting members while charging huge membership fees. This basically allows them to bypass the rule and gain structural and financial advantages.
So, it’s a mixed bag, really.
Eagle Football
There have been several new MCO that’s have emergerd over the past few years. One of the larget growing newcomers in Eagles Football. A group headed up by American John Textor. The group has major stakes in Botafogo, Olympique Lyonnais and RWD Molenbeek in Belgium, and a large portion of Crystal Palace.
Textor’s been very open about his intentions for this MCO. Sharing resources, facilities players- all the regular stuff.
These acquisitions have all been relatively recent, so it would be fair to say that we need to give them a little bit more time to establish themselves. But, results have been very scattered across the board for all the teams involved.
Ever since their investment into Crystal Palace, there has been a disdain that the fans have had for the ownership and textor in particular.
Publicly falling out with chairman Steve Parish, continued employment of Roy Hodgeson and a general feeling that he doesn’t have the best of intentions for Palace are pretty strong.
When it comes to Lyon, the situation is far worse. They’ve spent the majority of the current season in the relegation zone and are only 4 points off dead last, at the time of recording this.
It’s honestly a very crazy story. What’s been going wrong? Far too much to put into one video, I guess. However, to summarize a large portion of the fan base- ownership.
In the 2023/24 season alone, Lyon have had 3 different managers. They are over $400 million in debt and the former owner and current owner have been in a feud seemingly since the takeover back in 2022.
Jean-Michel Aulas was the owner of the club between 1987 and 2022. So you can imagine that there was a lot of familiarity, heritage and processes that were locked throughout the 35 years.
The conflict seems to stem from a strategic difference between Textor and Aulas. Aulas was asked to stay on after the takeover to prevent braindrain and smooth the transition. He would serve as club president for 3 more years.
The sale was finalised in December 2022, yet only 5 months later, Aulas had stepped down, amdist an apparent feud with the new leadership? Textor and his crew believed that many of the club’s processes were outdated and obsolete in the current football climate. Their intentions were to modernize and restructure.
In 36 years, Aulas took the men’s team from a second division side to a European powerhouse. 7 straight titles in a row pre-oil money is crazy.
The women’s side won the domestic league 14 times in a row between 2006 and 2020. And the Champions League 5 times in a row between 2016 and 2020, with not one, not two, not three, not even four, but 5 trebles. The best women’s team in existence.
All of this happened under Aulas. The fans may have disagreed with him at times, but I’ll let you all decide on who they sided with in this dispute.
Outside of that Botafogo haven’t experienced nearly as many extremes. They even led the Campeonato Brasileiro for a large portion of 2023.
On a more questionable note: Crystal Palace is owned in part owned by John Textor and another American, investor David Blitzer. Both of whom have ownership stakes in opposing teams in the Belgian football pyramid. RWD Molenbeek for Textor, S.K. Beveren for Blitzer. Teams that finished one place apart in both the 21/22 and 22/23 Belgian 2nd division seasons. Can anybody spell conflict of interest?
For legal reasons, this is purely an observation and nothing more.
777 Partners
77 Partners are another MCO that have made a big splash. Their portfolio includes 7 separate clubs with one club still pending. The one still pending… is Everton.
Although, by the looks of things, it looks like if any deal is going to go through here, 777 will be acquiring a championship squad frm Farhard Moshiri.
Otherwise, they are the full controllers of the oldest club in Italian football, Genoa and a minority controllers the Europa League final boss, Sevilla. According to them, they’ve taken a slightly different approach to the usual MCO model we’ve seen thus far.
For all of the examples we’ve discussed, there exists a flagship club and a handful of teams below them in the pyramid, each of whom are more or less designed to feed their best talent to the top team.
“We don’t have a hierarchy of clubs – this is not a pyramid-type model. This is really about preserving the independence and the deep and rich histories of the individual clubs.”
Joshua Wander, managing partner of the Miami Based group had this to say after the majority, 64.7% stake in Hertha Berlin was acquired. Fair enough.
Wander himself has been catching a lot of flak throughout this whole process. In 2022, after the majority stake in Vasco Da Gama was purchased, it came out that he had been arrested after ordering 31 gams of baking powder to his house in 2003. The kind of baking powder that Quincy Promes handles.
He was also once sued by the Bellagio Casino for failing to pay back over $54 000 in cash advances.
Let’s be real for a second and acknowledge that all of this happened decades ago and clearly has not affected his ability to perform in the business landscape. But it’s not the kind of publicity you don’t want in a business where the entire world scrutinizes the characters of leadership.
What’s worse is that since acquiring these clubs, results have varied.
Hertha were relegated last season. Genoa were relegated, then climbed back up. Sevilla have been struggling all year, but did win the Europa league last season, to be fair.
It’s another mixed bag.
What’s the Problem?
Several more organisations are following suit with this business model. I mentioned Todd Boehly at the start of the video- Blue Co consortium , of which he is a founder, own 100% of both Chelsea and RC Strasbourg Aisace.
And if we’re all being honest, this makes a lot of sense, coming from Chelsea. Their infamous loan army has been a great driver of revenue over the years. But they relinquish control of a players development when they do so. With a large network of clubs, this can be avoided.
David Blitzer’s Global Football Holdings, who as I mentioned is part owner of Palace, has several other clubs under his ownership. FC Augsburg, Brøndby IF, ADO Den Haag, G.D. Estoril Praia, AD Alcorcón and S.K. Beveren
The Saudi Arabian PIF controls the biggest clubs in the Pro League, as well as Newcastle and are undoubtedly going to add to that.
Giampaolo Pozzo has owned Udinese Calcio since 1986. And at one point, he owned all of Udinese, Granada in Spain and Watford in England. He would send players back and forth between the clubs much like all the other MCOs we’ve talked about. In 2024, the Pozzo family only controls Udinese and Watford.
MCOs are here to stay. Your favourite club will likely be part of one within the next 5 to 10 years if it isn’t already. It seems like the next evolution in talent acquisition and strategic building , I guess.
So why the hate? From an overall perspective, what are the major problems with MCOs?
Transfer market manipulation
The problems include, but definitely are not limited to the following: 1. Transfer market manipulation.
MCGs use their networks to shift players around for free or through loans, meaning that no fees are paid. A situation where a multi-billion-pound club buys a player that it’s less cash flush network team could never afford, specifically for it’s less cash flush network team, feels kinda odd.
I’m not the person to consult about the legalities of it all, of course- all of my videos are satire . But it seems like this can potentially be clever and efficient circumvention of FFP among other things
UEFA said that more than 6500 players exist within a Muli club group structure in their 2022 Benchmarking report. The number of clubs confirmed in multi-club networks since this report has almost doubled.
That’s a lot of swapping around.
Conflicts of interest
2. Conflicts of interest.
Many leagues have strict restrictions against MC networks within the same nation. But that doesn’t completely close the door to rule circumvention.
I mentioned John Textor and David Blitzer earlier on. Two men that jointly own one team and also separately own two other competing teams in another division. This situation seems like it could be problematic if bad actors are involved.
It’s very complicated to argue the ethics there.
But we’re talking about the Belgian second division here, I guess. What about oh, let’s say… The champions League? Manchester City and Girona will likely both be in the UCL next season. What happens then?
Well, we know what will happen, because we’ve seen this situation play out before.
RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg have both been in European competition for years now. They’ve even played one another before. Twice. This was in the group stages of the 18/19 Champions League. Salzburg won both times.
The reason this was allowed to happen is as follows:
“No individual or legal entity may have control or influence over more than one club participating in a Uefa club competition”
UEFA decided that no individual or legal entity had a decisive influence over more than of the clubs involved.
Their lawyers did a great job of making sure that was the case. And believe you, me- Manchester City’s lawyers will do an even better job.
“We don’t trust you”
3. Trust issues.
It’s hard to really ascertain the intentions of some of these owning organisations. How sure can you be that you aren’t just going to be used as a farm for another team? That the owners really have you best interests at heart. And I’m specifically talking about this from the fan perspective.
If you’re not the flagship club, what are your future prospects?
Crystal Palace fans have held this line of thought ever since the Eagle football takeover. Who is the flagship? Lyon or us? Lyon fans feel the exact same way. If both sets of fans feel this way, something might be wrong.
CFG was built around Man City, so there is no fear from them. But what about their other success story, Girona? Their star boy, Savinho, made it clear that Man City is his goal all the way back when he signed for Troyes. Recent reports show that he’ll achieve this come next season. But even this deal has been scrutinezed for potential manipulation of the transfer market.
Where will that leave Girona in the future? Smaller teams have historically never been able to keep their star talent. But the inevitability around this kind of pipeline is a little disheartening, I’d think.
Corporate Greed
And finally, the last reason for why MCOs are so contentious ties to the previous reason. 4. It feels inorganic.
Football is a business, it always has been. There’s a reason why so many people want to get into it. There’s a reason why production quality is so high and the numbers are so inflated.
However, it hasn’t felt like that forever. At least, not for me. The nostalgia I have for Ronaldo shushing highbury is hardwired into me. It was just as much of a corporate initiative back then as it is now. Whoever is shocked after hearing, I’m sorry for ruining your childhood.
And that’s part of the reason why MCO are so disliked. They are quite blatantly strategic and therefore corporate. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If the product is good, I will keep paying and don’t lie, so will you. The idea of MCOs just messes with the veil of “working man’s sport” and all.
To wrap this one up, there are still several questions that have been raised about this business model and if it embodies the spirit and integrity of the sport.
Another thing worth discussing is the ultimate reasoning behind these groups.
In the case of Manchester City, its’s widely believed that the purpose is expanding the global footprint of the UAE.
As mentioned before, Redbull’s primary purpose is marketing.
Mohamed Bin Salmen has stated that their ventures into Sports entertainment is part of the plan to decrease Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil.
777, Eagles football, Bluco, they all say their ultimate goal is community. Who knows, really?
What I do know is that we haven’t seen anything yet.