12 May 1, 2022The Sunday TimesFootball
F
rom its gaudily contested
summit to the dangerous foot-
hills of the planet’s most afflu-
ent football league, Stars and
Stripes fly everywhere. Liver-
pool, Arsenal, Manchester
United, Crystal Palace, Aston
Villa, Leeds United and Burn-
ley are all either wholly or signifi-
cantly owned by Americans. Chelsea
may soon join the Yankee parade.
Factor in US private equity group
Silver Lake’s 2019 investment in Man-
chester City’s multi-club group and
Tripp Smith’s 10 per cent of West Ham
United, alongside the return of Shahid
Khan’s Fulham, and we can expect
Americans to hold significant stakes
in at least half of the Premier League’s
20 clubs next season.
Why? Contrast the statements of
the Todd Boehly-led consortium
selected by the Raine Group as the
preferred one of the three US bids for
Chelsea with those of Sir Jim Ratcliffe,
the Monaco-based English billionaire
attempting to gazump them. “This is a
British bid, for a British club,” stated
Ratcliffe’s Ineos Group upon
announcing his £4.25 billion (actuallyDuncan CastlesA FEW DOLLARS MORE
Football
£2.5 billion for Roman Abramovich’s
equity) on Friday. “We are making this
investment as fans of the beautiful
game, not as a means to turn a profit.”
Nationality card firmly played, the
claim is that Ratcliffe’s promise to
pump a further £1.75 billion into Chel-
sea over the next decade is not
intended as a wealth-generating exer-
cise. Boehly and his co-investors are
playing a different financial game.
“It is hard to buy quality and also
not have to pay up,” Boehly says of
Chelsea. “Then it’s a question of, can
you continue to build on what you’ve
acquired at that price? I continue to
believe that there is a global opportu-
nity for the best ones.”
His business partner, Jonathan
Goldstein, a Tottenham-supporting
property developer, argues that
Chelsea’s social media following, “in
excess of half a billion people around
the world”, dwarves that of Arsenal,
Manchester United and Liverpool.
“There’s the global base, the media
rights, the merchandising, the broad-
casting rights — the brand,” he says.
The rebuild of Stamford Bridge is
presented not as a financial millstone
but as an opportunity to create new
revenue streams that go beyondplacing more (and richer) bums on
blue seats.
The Californian investment firm,
Clearlake Capital, is set to provide a
large chunk of capital, with the Swiss
billionaire Hansjorg Wyss signed up as
another “partner”. Boehly has been
buying bits of blue-chip sports opera-
tions since 2012, when he joined the
record $2.15 billion purchase of the
Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
Last year, Walter and Boehly added a
27 per cent stake in basketball’s LA
Lakers at a reported $5 billion.
Like many American owners in the
Premier League, they are building
“multi-franchise” sports businesses
that traverse both continents. Stan
Kroenke has combined Arsenal with
the Los Angeles Rams, Colorado
Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Colorado
Rapids and other assets into a group
valued at more than $10 billion.
The Glazers own Manchester
United and the Tampa Bay Bucca-
neers. Khan has Fulham, NFL’s Jack-
sonville Jaguars and All Elite Wres-
tling. The York family at Leeds, and
Josh Harris and David Blitzer, two of
Crystal Palace’s three US sharehold-
ers, are further examples.
Fenway Sports Group recently paidUS investors still see
hidden value as
Premier League
takeovers continue
were to be more intelligently revived,
exponential gains could be made.
Then there is the idea that English
football clubs could be run a bit more
like American tech companies.
“If you apply the valuation metrics
that are used in Silicon Valley for tech
companies the value per user is signifi-
cantly north of $3 per user, which
would be the value that you are apply-
ing to Manchester United today,” Roger
Mitchell, the former Scottish Premier
Football League chief executive, said
on a recent edition of The Transfer Win-
dow podcast. “The difference is that
football has not yet grasped the oppor-
tunity of direct-to-consumer, knowing
your fans, getting them to spend more
money with you, get their lifetime
value up. All the things that Silicon Val-
ley knows very well.
“I could make a serious case that
$4 billion for Chelsea is a bargain. For
the value per user, for the upside of
the inevitable Super League, and for
the value of brand data that comes
from being a sexy London club.”
In a geopolitically chaotic modern
marketplace, America’s super rich
have the money to buy up Premier
League assets. They’re doing so with
the intention of making more of it.close to a billion dollars to add NHL’s
Pittsburgh Penguins to the Boston
Red Sox and Liverpool. That the cost
of acquiring an ice hockey team came
in at well over double their 2010
acquisition of a football club — who
are now competing for an unprece-
dented Quadruple — underlines the
growth in the value of sports assets.
A belief that elite Premier League
clubs are significantly undervalued
relative to American sports assets is
broadly held. The growth in overseas
media revenues is predicted to con-
tinue, and if a European Super LeagueThe takeover of Chelsea by the
Boehly Group would mean that US
investors have stakes in half the
clubs in the Premier LeagueAMERICAN STAKES IN TEN CLUBS
Outright or
majority owned
Arsenal
Burnley
Chelsea*
C Palace
Liverpool
Man UtdClubs with US
shareholders
Aston Villa
Leeds Utd
Man City
West Ham Utd*to be confirmed