FootBiz newsletter #186: Money, ownership and power across world football

FOOTBIZ

Friday, 14 August 2026

Another English football club appears to be heading for the market.Leicester City's Thai owners, King Power, are looking to sell the club for more than £200 million, according to a BBC report on Thursday.King Power has controlled Leicester since 2010.What happened next is fairly well known.

Promotion to the Premier League.A 5,000-1 title.Champions League football.An FA Cup.

Relegation.Promotion.Relegation again.And now, potentially, an exit.

It's an extraordinary sporting story.It's also a useful business case study.Leicester demonstrates the enormous financial difference between owning a football club and owning a football club with dependable access to Premier League revenue.The stadium hasn't moved.

The supporters haven't disappeared.The brand hasn't suddenly ceased to exist.But the revenue environment surrounding the asset can change dramatically according to which division it occupies.That makes the reported £200m-plus asking price interesting.

For comparison, King Power acquired control of Leicester in 2010 when English football valuations existed in an entirely different universe.Since then, private equity, sovereign wealth, American family offices and billionaire investors have pushed the scarcity value of English football clubs dramatically higher.Leicester offers something increasingly difficult to find: a recognised English football brand, substantial infrastructure, a recent history of elite competition and a credible pathway back to the Premier League.

King Power Stadium: the infrastructure behind Leicester's reported valuation.

Photo: Arne Müseler / arne-mueseler.com · CC BY-SA 3.0 · unmodified

It also comes with the inconvenient requirement of actually getting there.

Leicester may provide another useful test of whether investors now value major English clubs principally on their current revenues or on the scarcity and long-term optionality of the underlying asset.

At £200m, somebody isn't buying Championship television income.They're buying the possibility of something considerably bigger.

AND THEN THERE'S LIVERPOOL

If Leicester represents one end of the English football investment market, Liverpool represents the other.Reuters reported this week that a consortium led by Amit Bhatia and including Jeff Bezos and Eduardo Saverin was nearing a deal for a substantial minority investment in Liverpool.The reported transaction could value the club at around £4.4 billion ($5.9bn), with Fenway Sports Group retaining control.There is an important qualification here:

this is still a reported transaction, not a completed one.But the valuation alone is worth examining.FSG acquired Liverpool in 2010 for approximately £300 million.Sixteen years later, investors are reportedly discussing a valuation approaching fifteen times that amount.

Liverpool obviously isn't the same business it was in 2010.Anfield has been expanded. Commercial revenues have grown. The Premier League has become an even more valuable international media product. Liverpool's global commercial operation has matured considerably.

Anfield's expansion is one component of Liverpool's dramatic growth in enterprise value.

Photo: Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0 · unmodified

But something else has happened.Elite football clubs have become a recognised institutional asset class.And minority stakes are increasingly part of that market.An investor no longer necessarily needs to find £5bn and acquire Manchester United outright.

They can buy into an existing ownership structure, gain exposure to the appreciation of an elite sporting asset and leave operational control with the incumbent owner.For FSG, meanwhile, selling a minority position potentially crystallises part of the enormous value it has created without surrendering the asset.That's a rather attractive piece of financial engineering.It is worth pondering on the obvious question – if Liverpool is worth £4.4bn, what is everybody else worth?

ENGLISH FOOTBALL'S SHIRT-SPONSORSHIP RESET HAS ARRIVED

There is another change arriving in the Premier League this season, and this one is considerably more visible.Front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship is gone.Premier League clubs voluntarily agreed to remove gambling brands from the front of matchday shirts from the beginning of the 2026/27 season.And some clubs are discovering that replacing the money isn't necessarily instantaneous.

Nottingham Forest are entering the new season without a front-of-shirt sponsor, having previously carried Bally's branding. Chelsea are also currently without a main shirt sponsor.That doesn't mean the sponsorship market has collapsed.It does mean the market is being repriced.Betting companies were unusually attractive football sponsors because customer acquisition economics could justify extremely aggressive spending.

Remove that category from the most valuable piece of inventory on the shirt and clubs have to find companies from sectors with rather different marketing economics.Airlines.Financial services.Technology.

Consumer brands.Automotive.Telecommunications.And those companies may be rather more interested in demonstrating measurable commercial return before signing an eight-figure cheque.

There is another wrinkle.Clubs don't necessarily want to lock themselves into a long-term agreement if they believe their sporting performance could substantially increase the value of the inventory.Hence the occasional spectacle of extremely wealthy football clubs beginning a season with a large blank space across the front of the shirt.Sometimes no deal is better than the wrong deal.

For a while, at least.

JAPAN WANTS TO SELL THE J.LEAGUE TO THE WORLD

One of the week's more interesting commercial developments comes from Japan.The J.League has appointed IMG to lead a new international sponsorship push, as Japanese football looks to expand its commercial footprint beyond its domestic market.It is easy to understand the attraction.Japan has one of Asia's most mature football ecosystems, major corporate brands, strong infrastructure and an increasingly important role within the international player market.

A J.League match framed by domestic commercial partners—the audience IMG now aims to sell internationally.

Photo: Al-hayat · CC BY 2.0 · unmodified

What it has never fully developed is the international commercial footprint enjoyed by Europe's major leagues.That creates an interesting question.Can a domestic league become significantly more valuable internationally without first becoming a major international television product?The J.League may offer a useful experiment.

Japanese companies already possess enormous international distribution.Japanese footballers increasingly populate Europe's leading leagues.And the 2026 World Cup has provided another enormous global marketing moment for Japanese football.The challenge is connecting those things.

The Premier League sells an international audience to international brands.The J.League may increasingly try something slightly different:use international brands to help build the international audience.One to watch.

QUICK BUSINESS

Premier League spending isn't slowing down

Another summer.Another reminder that the Premier League appears to operate under different economic physics from everybody else.English top-flight clubs are once again leading global transfer expenditure, with the league accounting for a substantial proportion of the largest deals completed during the summer window.There is a tendency to describe this simply as English clubs “having more money”.

That's true.But the structural advantage is more interesting.Reliable broadcasting income allows Premier League clubs to make transfer commitments against future cashflows with a degree of confidence that many continental rivals simply don't possess.The result is increasingly visible further down the table.

The Premier League's financial advantage isn't merely that Manchester City can outspend Milan.It's that mid-ranking English clubs can compete financially with historic European giants.

Inter discovers the joys of boring finance

Inter's transition from Suning to Oaktree provides a useful counterpoint.The Italian club's recent history involved heavy debt, financing pressure and eventually a change of control when Suning failed to repay its loan to Oaktree.The new ownership has instead focused on reducing financial risk and improving profitability.None of this is particularly exciting.

Inter and Milan at kick-off. Inter's sporting scale now sits within a more disciplined ownership model.

Photo: danheap77 · CC BY 2.0 · unmodified

Which is rather the point.European football spent years rewarding owners willing to tolerate enormous losses in pursuit of sporting success.Cost controls and increasingly sophisticated institutional ownership are slowly making not losing ridiculous amounts of money something resembling a competitive strategy.Progress comes in strange forms.

FSG buys something that isn't football

Fenway Sports Group has expanded its sporting portfolio again, acquiring Boston Common Golf, the Boston franchise in the technology-driven golf competition TGL.On its own, this isn't a football story.In the context of the reported Liverpool minority investment, however, it is worth noting.Modern football ownership groups increasingly don't behave like football-club owners.

They behave like sports holding companies.FSG has interests spanning Liverpool, the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Penguins and now additional golf assets.The logic is increasingly familiar: shared commercial expertise, sponsorship relationships, media capabilities, data, venues and institutional knowledge deployed across multiple sporting properties.Football is becoming part of a portfolio.

THE FOOTBALL MONEY TRAIL

Here's something we're going to start following more systematically.Football loves announcing transaction values.“Player signs for €60m.”Excellent.

But what actually happens to the €60m?The selling club may owe a sell-on.Another club may receive solidarity payments.Agents receive commissions.

Neymar's presentation at Paris Saint-Germain: the public face of a transfer before fees, commissions and accounting treatment.

Photo: Antoine Dellenbach · CC BY-SA 2.0 · unmodified

The original acquisition cost still has to be considered.Accounting profit can bear little resemblance to the headline transfer fee.And instalments mean the cash may arrive over several years.So rather than simply repeating transfer values, FootBiz will increasingly ask:

Purchase price → sale price → remaining book value → sell-on → solidarity → agent costs → estimated trading profit.Because the largest transfer isn't necessarily the best transfer.A €25m player acquired for €500,000 can be considerably better business than a €70m player acquired for €50m.Football has spent years ranking clubs by how much they spend.

It might be more useful to rank them by how intelligently they spend it.

ON THE FOOTBIZ RADAR

Leicester City — King Power is reportedly seeking more than £200m. The identity of prospective bidders — and the eventual valuation — could provide a useful benchmark for major Championship assets.Liverpool — Watch for confirmation, structure and valuation of the reported minority investment. At approximately £4.4bn, the implications extend well beyond Anfield.

Premier League sponsorship — Forest and Chelsea still have valuable blank spaces to fill. The first season without front-of-shirt betting brands should tell us plenty about the real depth of the sponsorship market.J.League — IMG's international sponsorship mandate is worth following. Japanese football has enormous underlying commercial ingredients; the question is whether they can be packaged for a global market.

Transfer trading — The European windows remain open. Ignore the gross spend for a moment. We're increasingly interested in which clubs are generating the best returns.

ONE MORE THING...

FROM THE ACCOUNTS

96%There are plenty of complicated ways to explain the economics of the Championship.Here's an easier one.£942 million in revenue.£903 million in wages.

That's what Championship clubs collectively generated and spent respectively during the 2024/25 season, according to the latest financial data.In other words, 96p of every £1 earned went straight back out in wages.And that was the average.Thirteen Championship clubs actually spent more on wages than they generated in total revenue.

Before transfer amortisation.Before agents.Before running the stadium.Before, well, everything else.

Collective net debt across the division reached approximately £1.4 billion.Why?Because the prize sitting above them is enormous.Promotion to the Premier League can transform a club's finances virtually overnight, while parachute payments give recently relegated clubs a substantial advantage over competitors trying to reach the same destination.

The Championship play-off final at Wembley, where promotion carries transformative financial value.

Photo: Kolforn · CC BY-SA 4.0 · unmodified

So, Championship owners keep placing the bet.Spend today. Get promoted tomorrow. Fix the economics later.The problem is that only three clubs can go up.Football occasionally makes casinos look conservatively managed.

FootBiz returns next week.