The Premier League Owners: Why half of clubs will soon be in American hands

Welcome to part two in our series about who owns the Premier League’s 20 clubs. Today, we look at American investors: who are they, why are they so taken with the English top flight and what are their plans?

In the conference halls of Fort Lauderdale’s Hard Rock Hotel and Casino last week, representatives of the United Kingdom’s government were among the more surprising attendees.

This was the Soccerex conference, a two-day indoor fair where people — paying hundreds of dollars for entry — hear from panels that include owners, investors and executives from soccer teams in the United States and Europe, while a variety of sport agents, league representatives, lawyers, software specialists, artificial intelligence marketeers and aspiring entrepreneurs wander around an exhibition room.

The UK government was represented by Richard Albert, head of its capital investment sector in North America. Albert’s job is to drive U.S. capital into the UK economy, particularly in the sectors of clean energy, real estate and technology, but in the past 12 months a new focus has emerged: sport and, in particular, English football.

It is, essentially, a matchmaking service, seeking to introduce reliable investors to those within the Premier League and Football League who are looking for support or an exit route. Barely a day goes by, according to Albert, where his team are not approached about buying or selling English football clubs. Private equity, venture capital, real-estate funds, infrastructure funds, university endowments and public sector pension funds in the U.S. have all shown interest or executed investments.

The UK government is attempting to facilitate investment into one of the British economy’s most successful exports: the Premier League, which broadcasts to 189 of the 193 United Nations member states. In May, the Premier League said 1.87billion people follow the division worldwide and 900million homes globally are able to watch Premier League football. Little wonder, therefore, that North American investors have taken a liking to a product that attracts $450m (£355m) per season for the U.S. media rights alone from NBC.

Only 20 years ago, there were no majority American owners in the Premier League. Now nine of the top flight’s 20 teams are majority-owned by U.S. investors: Manchester United, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Chelsea, Fulham, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Ipswich Town. Those ownerships include some of the most recognisable, and in some cases, divisive figures in English football — the Glazer family, the Kroenkes, Todd Boehly & Clearlake Capital, and Fenway Sports Group. That number is likely to increase, as Everton are expected to be taken over by the Texas-based Friedkin family.

Several of the non-U.S. owned Premier League clubs are seeking external investment, with merchant bank Rothschild out searching on behalf of Tottenham Hotspur, Brentford and West Ham United, to varying degrees. The U.K. government has also tapped Rothschild, along with the consultancy firm Deloitte, as part of its matchmaking process for British sporting institutions. Introductions were made in partnership with Deloitte for potential U.S. investors seeking to claim control of franchises within The Hundred, the cricket tournament run by the England and Wales Cricket Board. As for the Premier League, those deals may come down the tracks.

It is, therefore, increasingly possible, perhaps even probable, that a substantial majority of Premier League teams may one day be U.S.-owned.

But who are these investors, why are they so taken by the Premier League and what plans might they have for England’s national sport?

In an interview with the Financial Times earlier this year, John W. Henry, principal owner of Fenway Sports Group, said sports ownership has evolved from “mom and pop operations” to “tough, competitive businesses”. In the Premier League, U.S. investment has been at the heart of that transition. We can largely boil it down to two forms: family offices and institutional money but, in recent years, as the cheques have become bigger, we increasingly see the two converge.

It all started in 2005 when the Glazer family, already owners of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, acquired Manchester United for £790million in a controversial, highly-leveraged buyout, which has since seen £815million spent servicing debt placed on the club and £432million paid out in dividends during almost 20 years of ownership. In that time, Manchester United have not won the Premier League, nor progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League in the last 11 years. Yet the Glazers still sold a 27.7 per cent stake in Manchester United for £1.3bn last year.

The family have come to be synonymous with a perception of U.S. investment; where owners are seen as extractors, milking an asset while failing to contribute. This perception appeared all the more acute when set against the lavish spending of a Russian oligarch in Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and a fund owned by Sheikh Mansour, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, at Manchester City.

Sections of Manchester United fans have long protested at the Glazers’ approach (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

The reality, however, is that, while U.S. investors may share ideas and trends in common, the Glazer model has not been representative of the Americans who followed. There have been horror stories; most notably the ownership of George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks at Liverpool, where their mismanagement and public fallout drove the club to the brink of destruction before being rescued by FSG in 2010.

Other experiences have been scarring. Only this month, Swansea’s majority shareholders Jason Levien (who also owns D.C. United in Major League Soccer) and Steve Kaplan exited the Championship club for a vast loss, having acquired it at a £110million valuation in 2016, when Swansea had been a Premier League side for five consecutive years.

Dividends — a payment to a company’s shareholders — are largely a Glazer phenomenon. At Soccerex, Shilen Patel, a Florida-based healthcare entrepreneur and the new owner of West Brom, acknowledged that “dividend might be a bad word” in the lexicon of English football. He added: “The expectation is always if the club is successful to reinvest. And I don’t think that that’s an unfair expectation. The trade-off is you measure success by value; the more that you can do, the more valuable you can be.”

This is a consistent strand among many U.S. investors; whether it be funds such as FSG at Liverpool or family offices like the Kroenkes at Arsenal. These groups have largely pursued self-sustaining models, or what the clubs might describe as a virtuous cycle, where the club’s revenue, from growing media rights, untapped sponsorship opportunities, smart player trading and enhanced matchday experiences, can be reinvested to develop the playing squad, win more games and allow for incremental growth. Self-sustaining models are also common in U.S. sport, where the Kroenkes own the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, MLS’s Colorado Rapids, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.

Multi-sport groups have become a recurring trend, too. FSG also owns baseball’s Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Penguins in the NHL. Josh Harris and David Blitzer each own a stake in Crystal Palace while, sometimes together and sometimes separately, they have had interests across all five major U.S sports leagues. Chelsea’s Todd Boehly is also an investor in the L.A. Dodgers and L.A. Lakers, although his personal stake in Chelsea — despite being chairman and temporary sporting director of the club — is dwarfed by the 61.5 per cent stake owned by private equity firm Clearlake Capital.

FSG has, arguably, become the No 1 success story of sports ownership by U.S. investors. Since purchasing the Red Sox in 2002, no team has won more World Series than its four, a particular feat considering it had not won since 1918 before that. Liverpool also ended their 30-year wait for a top-flight title when they won the Premier League in 2020.

In the 2017-18 financial year, Liverpool posted a then world-record pre-tax profit for a football team of £125million, now often cited among potential U.S. investors as a signpost of what can be achieved when a club optimises revenue generation and player trading. Liverpool have also invested £50million in the club’s training ground under their owners, as well as up to £100m to expand their Anfield stadium, yet the ownership has made missteps too, notably over the failed European Super League launch in April 2021, and trying and failing to trademark the word ‘Liverpool’.

Yet the growth in the 14 years since acquisition is vast. FSG (then called New England Sport Ventures) paid £300million to acquire Liverpool in 2010, and Forbes now values the team at more than £4billion.

Given the huge increase in club valuations, it is little wonder all manner of U.S. investors want a slice of the Premier League pie. Take top-flight newcomers Ipswich Town: in April 2021, local businessman Marcus Evans sold the club to Gamechanger 20, a consortium between a pension fund from Arizona and a group of U.S. sports investors. The price was £30million for a club then in the third division of English football. Ipswich secured promotion to the Championship in 2023, after which Bright Path Sports Partners, a private equity firm from Ohio, invested “up to £105million” for roughly 40 per cent of the club, valuing it in excess of £250million. And that was before they were promoted to the Premier League in May.

GO DEEPER

Ipswich and their latest U.S. investors: ‘It’s been a rocket ship and we’re holding onto the wings’

Mark Ashton, Ipswich’s chairman and CEO, explained at Soccerex that the club’s jersey sales have risen from 10,000 per year to 100,000 per year since they took over, while revenues have increased from £13million to a forecast £155million this year. Kieran McKenna, the coach they hired from Manchester United’s backroom team, has overseen consecutive promotions and is, according to Ashton, “the hottest property in world management”. He told the room that “three clubs, two of which were potentially the biggest in England” wanted McKenna last summer — almost certainly Brighton, Chelsea and Manchester United — but Ipswich convinced him to sign a new deal.

McKenna celebrates Ipswich’s promotion to the Premier League in May 2024 (Stephen Pond/Getty Images)

Ashton also detailed how the club operates, saying: “We put some rules in place early on. The shareholders asked us to write the plan and they would hold us accountable. I will deliver the plan but the shareholders do not run the business. They do not have the manager’s number. They do not go to the training ground. They are not in the locker room. They do not get involved in the selection of the manager. They do not get involved in player recruitment.

“There is an executive management team that will run the business, and my initial explanation for that was, ‘I’ve got 30 years worth of experience in this industry and I’m still learning. But if you guys ask me to fly a plane tomorrow, the one thing I promise you (is) I’m going to crash it’. We see huge sports investment coming from all around the world into UK soccer, thinking that within 24 hours they can win the business, but they can’t.”

Ed Schwartz, who represents the Arizona pension fund, said Ipswich wanted “ownership that provides support, vision and oxygen but without getting in the way”.

“I think a lot of Americans come to the UK and think they know better,” he said. “They think, ‘We’re going to do it our way, we’re smarter’ and it comes across as arrogant. ‘We’re going to walk around and act like we own the place’.”

But for every feel-good story like Ipswich, it is worth remembering some realities. According to numbers compiled by football finance expert Kieran Maguire for the BBC, Premier League clubs lost more than £1billion in the 2022-23 season, while no club had wages at less than 46 per cent of their income and 14 clubs were at over 60 per cent.

Most Premier League clubs are losing money, while fans often demand that their owners spend even more. Top-end Premier League clubs are even more expensive and some may query the level of returns we can expect. This is perhaps even more important now the potential pool of investors is diminishing: Russian oligarchs are for now out of the question, Chinese capital has largely withdrawn from English football and there are only so many sovereign wealth funds with the means and desire to gatecrash the Premier League. All eyes on the U.S. then?

Even those badly scarred by English football say they can understand the motivation to invest. One former investor in a Premier League club, who remains anonymous to protect business relationships, explains: “Having had experiences in it, I am sometimes surprised people are like, ‘Yes, let’s do this!’ But the scarcity factor of major Premier League clubs is an incentive. You can go from being not a household name to a name in many households. You also get to sit around a table with major figures like the Man City owners, the Newcastle owners, the Kroenkes. To be in that room is important to people.”

West Brom owner Patel underlined this point at Soccerex. He said: “I spent 20 years running healthcare technology companies. I can walk through this entire casino and I may find a dozen people who want to talk to me about claims adjudication software and insurance companies. But you mention football, and the conversation doesn’t go any further than that.”

The Premier League also has another advantage; a relatively low entry point for would-be investors. Sportico, for example, value the cheapest NBA team to be the New Orleans Pelicans at $2.72billion and the most expensive to be the Golden State Warriors at $8.28billion. The Cincinnati Bengals is the cheapest NFL team at $4.71billion and the most expensive is the Dallas Cowboys ($10.32bn). Even in MLS, the new San Diego expansion team, entering in 2025, will pay a $500million fee to join.

Yet Bill Foley, also the owner of NHL team Vegas Golden Knights, acquired Bournemouth for only £120million in 2022. Newcastle were sold to the Saudi Public Investment Fund for a little over £300million in 2021.

The reason for the variance in valuation can largely be explained by promotion and relegation, a concept anathema to U.S. sport but the jeopardy that drives so much interest in English football. There are, currently, around eight clubs that would consider themselves part of the Premier League furniture but, for the rest, every season begins with the first objective being to secure their place in the next year’s edition, and in doing so, safeguarding their chunk of the Premier League’s television revenue.

In 2011, Richard Bevan, chair of the League Managers’ Association, said: “There are a number of overseas-owned clubs already talking about bringing about the avoidance of promotion and relegation in the Premier League. If we have four or five more new owners, that could happen.”

Such a move has never materialised — and it would encounter major backlash from clubs and governing bodies as well as fans, media and possibly government. But then we also not yet experienced a season where more than 14 Premier League clubs — the threshold required to pass rule changes — have been majority owned by Americans.

There is no sign of a slowdown.

Albert, head of the capital investment sector for the UK government in the U.S., told The Athletic: “U.S.-based investors are increasingly attracted to opportunities in the UK sports sector, and soccer in particular, for three very compelling reasons — lower valuations compared to equivalent premium assets in the U.S. sports ecosystem, greater availability of investible assets across the various professional leagues (both men’s and women’s) and more headroom for growth, with much greater upside to leverage intellectual property and broadcast rights on a global basis.”

Private equity is even demonstrating a willingness to take longer-term bets than we may usually expect from institutional money. Ordinarily, returns may be expected within three to five years but increasingly, there is a perspective on sport that it should be seen as a longer duration asset.

This is likely what is happening at Chelsea, where majority owner Clearlake Capital has invested hugely in the transfer market, largely on young talent on long contracts, in the first years of its ownership, hoping for sustained success further down the line.

Cole Palmer’s Chelsea contract runs until 2033 (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

One Premier League owner explains: “Investors want assets that appreciate over time. Sports is viewed as a category by the underlying investors where there could be a longer hold period, a forever asset. It’s not an, ‘I fix this, I grow revenue, I cut costs, I sell’. It’s accepted that it’s a longer duration.”

The consistent view is that these investors see opportunities for growth through better management and operating practices. The challenge is that the ratio between top-line revenue and player wages is extreme, so the focus therefore must be on maximising revenue.

One thing to remember, is that individuals successful enough to have millions (or billions), or to raise such money, are usually highly bullish about their own abilities. The former Premier League owner recalls colleagues saying they will use the best scouting, discover new analytics, operate smarter than those clubs already on the market when it comes to player trading. Liverpool, Brighton and Brentford offer strong case studies of what can be achieved under this model but many are catching up, and most clubs now have industry-leading sport scientists and data scientists, so differentiation is increasingly challenging.

What U.S. investors are really hoping for is further growth in the Premier League’s media rights. The Premier League may be a long way ahead of its soccer rivals, drawing in £3.33billion ($4.21bn) per year in domestic and global media rights, but this is dwarfed by the big American sports — despite the Premier League having a much larger global following. The NFL’s most recent deal, for its North American rights across CBS, Fox, Amazon, ESPN and NBC, is worth $111bn — more than $10bn per year — while the NBA’s domestic deal is worth $7.7bn per year.

U.S. investors are hopeful that greater investment in the Premier League will come from media companies, particularly via direct-to-consumer streaming, where platforms have spent billions acquiring rights to content, but also in integrating means in which clubs can connect directly with its global fanbase and monetise more effectively. There are also thought to be ancillary opportunities linked to sports teams, including stadium development, real estate, retail, technology and food and beverage companies; digging into the idea of sport as entertainment.

Other ideas permeate the corridors of power at Premier League clubs. If they really want to maximise revenues from the U.S., where the most growth is to be found, is it really wise to continue having matches take place at 12.30pm on Saturday afternoons, when it is 4.30am on the west coast? Pushing games later into the day would bring more competition from U.S. sports, of course, but could a happy medium be found?

Then there is the concept many within the Premier League secretly hope for but are currently too afraid to say publicly; taking competitive games outside of their home country and on the road. World governing body FIFA is close to confirming a change of policy that would allow it to happen and Spain’s La Liga has made no attempts to disguise its inclination to take games to Miami.

Tom Werner, the FSG chair, told the Financial Times earlier this year. “I’m determined one day to have a Premier League game be played in New York City. I even have the sort of crazy idea that there would be a day where we play one game in Tokyo, one game a few hours later in Los Angeles, one game a few hours later in Rio, one game a few hours later in Riyadh and make it sort of a day where football, where the Premier League, is celebrated.”

His boss at FSG and the ultimate Liverpool owner Henry played down that idea. But with more Americans entering the fray, we can expect many more discussions down the line.

(Top photos: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images, Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)