FootBiz newsletter #193: When Football Assets Stop Appreciating

Good morning.

Football spent much of the last decade discovering that clubs were assets. This week provides a useful reminder that not all assets appreciate.

Leicester City are reportedly for sale, Bordeaux are staring at another financial abyss, while Everton’s owners are looking for fresh capital less than two years after arriving.

Elsewhere, Wrexham have added another layer to their increasingly conventional football operation, Hyundai has bought its way into the Champions League and Sunderland are trying to make their data actually talk to each other.

Here’s what matters.

Leicester: £200m for a Very Large Rebuild

Leicester City are reportedly on the market.

The Times reports that the Srivaddhanaprabha family is seeking more than £200 million for the club following a fairly extraordinary descent from Premier League champions to League One.

It is difficult to think of many football assets that illustrate both the attraction and danger of club ownership quite so neatly.

Leicester have a modern stadium, an expensive training ground, a substantial supporter base and one of the most recognisable recent success stories in English football.

They also reportedly accumulated losses exceeding £180 million across three seasons, have suffered successive relegations and have started life in League One badly.

That makes £200 million an interesting number as a buyer isn't really purchasing a League One football business. At anything approaching that valuation, they're buying an option on Leicester becoming a Premier League club again.

And therein lies the problem. The infrastructure that once represented evidence of Leicester's progress now creates a cost base that has to be supported considerably further down the pyramid.

The next owner therefore needs something considerably more sophisticated than deep pockets – a football operation capable of rebuilding asset value quickly.

That means recruitment, contracts, academy development and player trading become central to the investment thesis rather than sporting departments merely sitting alongside it.

Distressed football assets are often marketed using their historical status. Their value, however, is determined by the probability of recovering that status.

Leicester may be one of the most fascinating tests of that distinction.

King Power Stadium, Leicester City's home ground.

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

Bordeaux: Another Rescue Falls Apart

The situation at Girondins de Bordeaux has taken another alarming turn.

US investment fund Park Bench has withdrawn from its proposed rescue of the six-time French champions after Bordeaux failed in their attempt to regain professional status. The collapse leaves liquidation as a serious possibility.

There are few better examples of how quickly institutional value can disappear in football. Bordeaux won Ligue 1 in 2009 and played Champions League football the following season.

They have a major metropolitan market, significant history and a 42,000-seat stadium built ahead of Euro 2016.

None of those things provide much protection when the operating company underneath them becomes unsustainable.

And Bordeaux's repeated attempts to attract new capital demonstrate something increasingly important for football investors: brand value cannot indefinitely compensate for structural losses.

Buying distressed clubs cheaply can look compelling on a spreadsheet. But the purchase price is frequently the least important part of the investment.

The real question is how much capital is required afterwards and how quickly the football operation can become self-sustaining.

Girondins de Bordeaux players warming up at Lens in September 2020.

Photo: Supporterhéninois · CC0 · unmodified

Wrexham Finally Appoint a Sporting Director

Wrexham have appointed former Newcastle United recruitment chief Steve Nickson as the club's first sporting director. The appointment is another interesting milestone in Wrexham's evolution.

Nickson spent 15 years at Newcastle and will now oversee a remit including recruitment, squad planning, football administration and performance, working alongside manager Phil Parkinson.

The popular version of Wrexham's rise is still Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, documentary revenues and enormous global attention.

Behind it, however, Wrexham are slowly being forced to confront exactly the same problem as every ambitious club – how do you institutionalise success?

Celebrity ownership can accelerate commercial growth but cannot accurately weigh in on player personnel decisions.

As clubs move higher through the pyramid, the competitive advantage provided by spending also diminishes. Recruitment processes, squad succession, medical performance, academy pathways and organisational design become progressively more important.

Creating a sporting-director position therefore looks less like another glamorous Wrexham appointment and more like something considerably more mundane and important.

Wrexham are aiming to become a proper football organisation.

The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham.

Photo: Paul Gillett · CC BY-SA 2.0 · unmodified

Křetínský Takes the Upper Hand at West Ham

West Ham's ownership picture has become considerably clearer. Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský has increased his holding to 46%, making him the club's largest shareholder.

David Sullivan's stake will rise to approximately 40%, while Vanessa Gold retains a minority interest.

The transaction effectively ends Amanda Staveley's attempt to acquire the Gold family's shares.

West Ham's relegation has transformed the financial and strategic environment around the club, and Křetínský is now expected to take a more active role in decision-making. For years, his investment in West Ham was intriguing precisely because of how passive it appeared.

The Championship creates an entirely different operating equation, with lower broadcast revenue and pressure on the wage base a reality. These items exacerbate an immediate sporting imperative to return to the Premier League before the economics become considerably more uncomfortable.

West Ham now have a clearly identifiable principal shareholder, something they arguably lacked previously.

West Ham United signage at London Stadium.

Photo: Matt From London · CC BY 2.0 · source crop

Serie A Wants Private Equity. Again.

Five years after Italian clubs walked away from one of football's biggest proposed private-equity deals, Serie A is going back to the market.

The league is reportedly exploring the sale of a minority stake in a new company controlling its international commercial rights, with the business potentially valued at between €3 billion and €4 billion.

The idea is rather different from the €1.7 billion CVC-led proposal rejected by clubs in 2021.

This time, Serie A is considering carving out its international operation, including overseas broadcasting, sponsorship and other commercial rights, rather than putting its entire media business into the vehicle.

The rationale isn't difficult to understand – Serie A remains one of the world's great football brands but has struggled to monetise its international audience at anything approaching Premier League levels.

And Italy's problem is increasingly visible in the transfer market. While Premier League clubs spent approximately £3.46 billion this summer, Serie A broke €1 billion, but Italian clubs remain far more dependent on player sales and increasingly find themselves supplying talent to richer leagues.

Private equity would provide capital, which may in theory enable its clubs to retain talent. There are, however, still questions around what Serie A would actually do with the money as selling a percentage of future income to plug today's financial gaps isn't much of a strategy.

Using an institutional partner to build overseas distribution, sponsorship, content and direct-to-consumer capabilities potentially is.

Serie A has less of a football than a monetisation problem. The product remains extraordinarily valuable. The challenge is extracting anything close to its potential value from the hundreds of millions of people around the world who consume it.

Private equity clearly thinks it can help but we've heard that one before…

Hyundai Drives Into the Champions League

Hyundai has signed a five-year global partnership with the UEFA Champions League.

The Korean automotive group becomes the competition's automotive partner as UC3 (the joint venture between UEFA and the European Club Association) continues building out the Champions League's commercial portfolio.

Automotive remains one of football's most reliable sponsorship categories for a reason. Few sporting properties can offer manufacturers the combination of global television distribution, premium positioning and geographic flexibility provided by the Champions League.

For UEFA and Europe's leading clubs, the more interesting element is the duration. Five years provides another piece of predictable commercial revenue at a time when clubs are becoming increasingly obsessed with growing the denominator in squad-cost calculations.

Barcelona Join the €1 Billion Club

Barcelona have passed €1 billion in annual revenue for the first time.

The club generated more than €1bn during 2025/26 despite the continuing financial burden of the Espai Barça project. This is another remarkable turn in a financial story which, not very long ago, appeared close to existential.

There are two ways of looking at Barcelona's recovery.

The first is that one of football's greatest commercial machines is beginning to function properly again.

The second is that the club has needed to become a billion-euro business partly because of the extraordinary financial commitments accumulated around it.

Barcelona's enormous global following gives it commercial levers unavailable to most other clubs – sponsorship, merchandise, touring, licensing, digital products, hospitality and ultimately the vastly increased earning potential of a redeveloped Camp Nou.

But the economics of the new stadium remain central to what comes next.

European football's biggest clubs are rapidly becoming billion-euro revenue businesses. Real Madrid crossed the threshold first and Barcelona have now joined them. The consequences won't remain confined to their accounts.

Under UEFA's 70% squad-cost rule, every additional €100 million of qualifying revenue potentially creates substantially more room to invest in the playing squad.

As mentioned previously by FootBiz, commercial growth and sporting power are becoming increasingly intertwined. The question then for the rest of Europe is how exactly do they compete with a football club capable of generating more than €1 billion every year?

For Barcelona, perhaps the most remarkable part is that after years of levers, emergency financing, registration dramas and financial crises, the club's biggest lever may ultimately turn out to be the oldest one in football:

Being absolutely enormous.

Construction work at Spotify Camp Nou in December 2025.

Photo: JaflaumS05 · CC0 · unmodified

Saudi's Big Four Enter a New Phase

Saudi Arabia's summer transfer window has closed following another period of structural change.

Perhaps the most important development occurred away from the transfer market. On August 19, the Ministry of Sport began transferring the non-profit foundations' remaining 25% stakes in Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli to the Public Investment Fund. That left PIF with full ownership of Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli; Al-Hilal remains different, with Kingdom Holding owning 70% and PIF retaining 30%.

The question now is whether the country's biggest clubs can develop recruitment, academy, commercial and executive structures capable of producing sustainable competitive advantage rather than simply purchasing it.

While Saudi football has already demonstrated that it can buy players, it faces a very different task in building its institutions.

Edu's Grand Forest Project Lasted 14 Months

So much for the empire.

Edu Gaspar has officially left Nottingham Forest, just 14 months after arriving in one of the most intriguing executive appointments in European football.

The former Arsenal sporting director wasn't hired simply to run Forest.

As Global Head of Football, Edu was supposed to work across Evangelos Marinakis' football interests, including Olympiacos and Rio Ave, effectively helping build the sporting architecture around a growing multi-club group.

It looked, on paper, like a significant job, but it hasn't lasted long.

Edu's departure follows an extraordinary period of instability at Forest, including repeated managerial changes and reports of deteriorating relations with Marinakis. CEO Lina Souloukou also left the club in June after only 18 months. Edu had already been effectively removed from day-to-day duties before Monday's formal announcement.

Multi-club ownership has created a new breed of football executive: the group sporting director, chief football officer or global head of football tasked with imposing strategy across several clubs.

There is a compelling theory in appointing an individual to oversee the centralization of scouting, sharing of intelligence, coordination of recruitment, creation of player pathways, etc.

But all of this hinges on a rather important prerequisite – somebody has to actually be allowed to implement it all.

Football remains littered with powerful owners who recruit experienced executives, give them impressive titles and then continue making the important football decisions themselves. At that point, organisational charts become largely decorative.

Edu was one of the most prominent football executives on the market when Forest hired him in July 2025. Fourteen months later, he's gone.

Football has become obsessed with recruiting sporting directors but remains considerably less enthusiastic about letting them direct.

Until Friday.

FootBiz