FootBiz newsletter #190: When Footballers Become Club Owners

The Footballers Becoming Club Owners

Thomas Müller has spent his career finding space, this time in Portugal. Müller, Mats Hummels, Yann Sommer and Lucas Hernández are among the strategic investors in the consortium that has acquired 90% of Estrela da Amadora's football company. The group is led by ADvantage and LEAD, with support from KI Group. The reported price in Portugal was €40 million for 90% of Estrela da Amadora’s SAD (the professional football company, not 100% of the club). The club retains the remaining 10%. Estrela are an interesting target precisely because they are not one of European football's obvious investment assets. The current club dates from 2020, following the demise of its predecessor, and occupies a very different financial universe from Benfica, Porto and Sporting. But that may be the attraction.

For investors, Portugal offers one of football's most established trading ecosystems, with comparatively modest operating costs combined with access to European competition and exceptionally strong recruitment links into South America and Africa. The business model is well understood. Acquire players intelligently, develop them, showcase them in a respected European league before selling them into richer markets. What makes the Estrela transaction more interesting is the people writing the cheques. Footballers once tended to recycle their wealth into property, restaurants and the occasional racehorse. Increasingly, elite players are becoming sports investors.

Thomas Müller: one of several elite footballers now investing directly in club ownership.

Photo: Steindy · CC BY-SA 3.0 · unmodified

Cesc Fàbregas at Como provided one model, Kylian Mbappé's investment in Caen provided another and ow a group containing several of Bayern Munich's most recognisable players of the past decade is entering the market. Modern football has made its greatest players extraordinarily wealthy. It has also given them decades of embedded knowledge about how the industry actually works – something traditional private-equity investors cannot buy. Müller and Hummels spent years creating value for Bayern Munich and now they get to discover what happens when the balance sheet belongs to them.

Nigeria Finds $7.5 Million — And Gives Most Of It To The Clubs

Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos: part of the domestic football economy the NPFL is working to commercialise.

Photo: S. Aderogba · CC BY-SA 4.0 · unmodified

One of the week's most interesting commercial deals didn't happen in London, Madrid or New York but in Nigeria. The Nigeria Premier Football League has agreed a new three-year, $7.5 million title sponsorship agreement with EUROMATCH. More importantly, 60% of the sponsorship revenue will go directly to NPFL clubs. NPFL chairman Gbenga Elegbeleye explicitly linked the arrangement to improving player wages and welfare, which sounds obvious, but it isn't. One of the central problems confronting emerging football markets is not simply generating commercial revenue but ensuring that money reaches the institutions actually producing the product. Nigeria is an especially fascinating example. It possesses a huge population, an enormous appetite for football and one of Africa's great player-production systems. Nigerian footballers populate leagues across the planet.

Yet the domestic competition has historically struggled to convert that football culture into an equivalent commercial machine, which creates an extraordinary imbalance. While Nigeria exports football extremely efficiently, it monetises Nigerian club football considerably less efficiently. The $7.5 million agreement does not solve that overnight but the structure might matter more than the headline number. If the clubs receive the money, invest it sensibly and improve the product, stronger commercial performance can create stronger clubs, which create a stronger competition, which becomes easier to sell. That is how leagues grow.

Barcelona Finds Another Airline

An EgyptAir Boeing 737: the airline has joined Barcelona’s expanding international partnership portfolio.

Photo: Julian Herzog · CC BY 4.0 · unmodified

Barcelona's commercial map has expanded again. EgyptAir has become the club's official airline partner in the Middle East and Africa through 2029, giving Egypt's flag carrier access to one of world football's most internationally recognisable brands. The timing is good – Barcelona exercised their purchase option on Hamza Abdelkarim, a young Egyptian striker from Al-Ahly, in June. Abdelkarim was selected for Egypt's 2026 World Cup squad, despite being only 18, and scored four goals in five preseason games for Hansi Flick’s team. There is nothing revolutionary about an airline sponsoring a football club, in fact quite the opposite. Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad and Turkish Airlines helped establish aviation as one of football's defining sponsorship categories. But the geography of this deal is worth watching. Football's biggest European clubs are increasingly carving their commercial rights into regional packages, allowing brands that cannot justify — or afford — a full global partnership to purchase access to specific markets.

For Barcelona, Africa and the Middle East are not peripheral territories but enormous potential consumer markets. For EgyptAir, meanwhile, Barcelona provides something airlines have always prized from football – instant international visibility married to tourism and travel. The commercialisation of elite football is becoming less about finding one enormous sponsor and more about monetising the same global audience repeatedly across categories and territories. Airline partner, Payments partner, Betting partner, Automotive partner, Telecommunications partner and all of the regional partners underneath them. A football club with hundreds of millions of followers isn't merely selling advertising anymore but access to geography. And geography can be sold repeatedly.

Austin Goes Shopping In Minnesota

Q2 Stadium, home of Austin FC: Khaled El-Ahmad now oversees the club’s complete soccer operation.

Photo: Larry D. Moore · CC BY 4.0 · unmodified

One of MLS's more interesting sporting-executive moves of the summer has landed. Austin FC have appointed Khaled El-Ahmad as Chief Soccer Officer and Sporting Director. El-Ahmad arrives after holding the senior sporting role at Minnesota United and takes control of Austin's entire soccer operation – roster construction, recruitment, scouting, player development and the pathway connecting the academy, Austin FC II and the first team. The appointment follows the departure of Pep Guardiola’s former assistant, Rodolfo Borrell. For years, sporting leadership in the league was treated as a specialised domestic profession. Understanding allocation money, designated players, drafts, trades, salary budgets and the league's labyrinthine roster rules could be almost as important as understanding players. El-Ahmad brings experience spanning MLS, Europe and City Football Group – precisely the kind of hybrid résumé increasingly attractive to ambitious American ownership groups.

MLS clubs no longer simply need somebody who understands only MLS but somebody who understands MLS and the rest of football. As the league's transfer spending, academies and international recruitment operations grow, sporting departments themselves are becoming more sophisticated. The American general manager is slowly becoming the global sporting director.

The Multi-Club Ownership Revolving Door

Ibrox Stadium: Rangers’ ownership links with Leeds illustrate the regulatory complexity of multi-club investment.

Photo: Dan Kearney · CC BY-SA 3.0 · unmodified

Paraag Marathe is back at Rangers. His return to the club's board, only months after stepping aside, illustrates one of the stranger consequences of football's multi-club ownership boom. Marathe is also chairman of Leeds United. Earlier this year, the possibility of Leeds and Rangers simultaneously participating in UEFA competition created a potential regulatory problem because of rules intended to prevent two clubs under common influence competing against one another. So Marathe stepped away from Rangers. Now circumstances have changed and he has returned and there is nothing improper about that but the episode demonstrates how complicated modern football ownership has become. Twenty years ago, determining who controlled a football club was generally straightforward. There was an owner, a board, a club. Now capital structures stretch across leagues and continents.

The same investment groups can have interests in England, Scotland, France, Portugal, Italy, Brazil and elsewhere. Directors move between boards. Clubs restructure voting rights when European qualification creates conflicts. Ownership groups have to consider the competitive consequences of another asset in their own portfolio succeeding. That last point is particularly bizarre. Multi-club ownership was originally sold partly on the basis that clubs would benefit from belonging to larger football networks. But European qualification can turn the success of one club into a governance problem for another. Football wanted institutional capital and has realised that institutional complexity is now part of the bargain.

English Football'S Great Manager Reset

Nine Premier League clubs entered the 2026/27 season with managers appointed since the end of last season. Almost half the league. Five of the traditional Big Six have also changed managers. There are individual explanations in every case, of course but collectively it says something interesting about the increasingly short shelf life of football strategy. Clubs talk endlessly about projects, philosophies and alignment. Recruitment departments construct squads around particular tactical profiles but then the manager loses six matches and everybody starts again. The financial consequences are larger than the compensation payment reported when a coach is dismissed.

A managerial change can alter the value of an entire squad. A full-back recruited for one system becomes unsuitable for another or a possession goalkeeper suddenly becomes a liability. A £40 million winger suddenly doesn't fit. The next manager wants four new players and the sporting director discovers that last summer's strategic investments have become this summer's unwanted inventory. This is precisely why continuity can itself become a competitive advantage. The best-run clubs increasingly try to construct football departments in which the coach fits the sporting model rather than allowing the sporting model to be rebuilt around every new coach. Nine changes in one summer suggest plenty of Premier League clubs are still trying to work that out.

Flamengo Finds Another Way To Monetise Brazil'S Biggest Audience

Flamengo supporters at the Maracanã: one of world football’s largest domestic audiences is becoming a global commercial asset.

Photo: Van Dijck · CC BY-SA 3.0 · unmodified

Flamengo have added another international company to their commercial portfolio, announcing a partnership with global mobility platform inDrive. On the surface, it is another sponsorship announcement but underneath it sits one of the most important business questions in South American football. How much should Flamengo actually be worth commercially? The club possesses an enormous domestic supporter base inside a country of more than 200 million people – something extraordinarily difficult to replicate. Brazilian clubs have traditionally generated nothing like the commercial revenue of Europe's giants, despite some commanding audiences comparable with major European institutions. That gap is gradually becoming an opportunity as international consumer brands increasingly see Brazilian clubs not merely as football teams but as distribution platforms capable of delivering enormous, young and digitally engaged audiences. Flamengo sits at the front of that market.

For decades, Brazilian football's principal export was talent and while this is set to endure, its next major export may be audience.

Premier League Clubs Have Found Their New Gambling Companies

The logos are changing but the money isn't disappearing. Premier League clubs entered this season without gambling companies occupying the front of their shirts following the league's voluntary prohibition. The answer as to who would replace them is becoming clearer – technology and finance. Crystal Palace have AI company Temporal, Coventry City have Monzo. Other clubs have increasingly turned towards fintech, financial services and technology businesses. For Premier League clubs outside the traditional Big Six, average front-of-shirt sponsorship values have reportedly increased from approximately £3.4 million in 2016/17 to £9 million today, which suggests the gambling withdrawal has not created the commercial catastrophe some feared. Instead, football has simply found another industry willing to pay for attention and there is a historical pattern here. Brewers once dominated football sponsorship, then airlines, then bookmakers. Now technology companies want the shirt.

The product being sold has never really changed. Thirty-eight weekends of people looking at your logo. See you next week