FootBiz newsletter #201: Crystal Palace could be for sale at £900 million

Crystal Palace could be for sale at £900 million

Crystal Palace's shareholders have appointed Raine Group to look for new investment and potentially a buyer for the club, with a valuation of around £900 million being sought.

The figure is just over double the valuation implied when Woody Johnson bought John Textor's 42.92% stake last summer. Johnson paid approximately £190 million for the shares, valuing the whole club at around £443 million at the time.

Johnson is now Palace's largest individual shareholder, alongside Josh Harris, David Blitzer and chairman Steve Parish. The shareholders are open to bringing in additional investment but a sale of the club is also among the options Raine has been asked to explore.

Palace has changed considerably since Textor first put his shares on the market. The club won the FA Cup in 2025 and the Conference League the following season, and has now spent more than a decade continuously in the Premier League. Its location in London is also likely to be a significant part of any pitch to prospective investors.

An aerial view of Selhurst Park in September 2023. Crystal Palace's shareholders are testing a £900 million valuation.

Photo: Arne Müseler · CC BY-SA 2.0

Raine already knows Palace well. Textor appointed the investment bank in 2024 to handle the sale of his stake, eventually leading to Johnson's arrival in July 2025.

Johnson's purchase provides the most recent benchmark for the club's value. His £190 million investment for 42.92% equated to approximately £443 million for 100% of Palace. On a simple pro-rata basis, the same stake would be valued at around £386 million if Palace were valued at £900 million.

The club's accounts provide another comparison. Palace recorded revenue of £196.6 million and a pre-tax profit of £8.3 million in 2024/25. A £900 million valuation would therefore be equivalent to approximately 4.6 times that season's revenue.

Palace has been planning the redevelopment of the Main Stand at Selhurst Park for several years. The project would add around 8,000 seats and take capacity beyond 34,000, but the expected cost has increased substantially since the plans were first drawn up. The club has previously acknowledged the need for additional investment to complete the work.

The ownership has been relatively stable since Johnson replaced Textor. Parish remains executive chairman and continues to run Palace day to day, while Johnson, Harris and Blitzer provide the bulk of the shareholder capital.

Raine will now test whether investors believe Palace's recent progress justifies the much higher valuation.

If Raine can find investors prepared to value Palace at £900 million, Johnson's holding would have an implied pro-rata value of around £386 million, compared with the approximately £190 million he paid little more than a year ago.

Manchester United face a fight to keep JJ Gabriel

JJ Gabriel turns 16 on Tuesday and his future at Manchester United remains unresolved.

Gabriel asked United to cancel his registration last month and there has been no shortage of interest from elsewhere. Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain have all been linked with him, while Barcelona have also been mentioned, although sporting director Deco has denied that they are involved.

FIFA's rules generally prevent international transfers before a player's 18th birthday, but 16 and 17-year-old EU citizens can move to clubs within the EU in certain circumstances. The Times reports that Gabriel has an Irish passport, which would allow him to use that exception and move to a club in the EU.

United could therefore find themselves receiving only FIFA training compensation if he leaves England, with The Times putting the likely amount at around £200,000–£300,000. By comparison, Chelsea secured £2.8 million guaranteed when Rio Ngumoha moved to Liverpool, with the package capable of reaching £6.8 million depending on appearances, contracts and international caps. Chelsea also retained a 20% sell-on.

Gabriel has been with United since he was 11 and is considered one of the best players of his age in England. He has already played for England U17s and has trained around United's senior team.

United cannot put a professional contract into effect until Gabriel turns 17 and have refused his request to cancel his registration. Bayern have held talks over a possible move, while Real Madrid are among the other clubs to have followed him closely.

If he moves to an EU club under those rules, United could receive only a few hundred thousand pounds.

Juventus is going back to its shareholders

Juventus wants authority to raise another €250 million from its shareholders, continuing a remarkable run of capital injections into the club.

Exor remains the controlling shareholder and is supporting the plan. The Agnelli family's holding company owns around 65% of the economic interest in Juventus and controls more than 78% of the votes. It has continued to fund the club through a period in which losses have become persistent.

Juventus lost €66 million in 2025/26, following a €58.1 million loss the previous year. Another loss is expected this season, with the absence of Champions League football removing an important part of the club's normal revenue.

Juventus hasn't reported a full-year profit since 2016/17. Investors have injected around €1 billion into the club over the past seven years.

Allianz Stadium in Turin during the UEFA Nations League finals in October 2021. Juventus is seeking authority to raise another €250 million.

Photo: Wackotaku · CC BY-SA 4.0

Exor has shown little sign that it is preparing to walk away. Tether, which had already built a position in Juventus, approached Exor last year about buying its controlling stake. The proposal was rejected and Exor said Juventus wasn't for sale. It is now being asked to provide more capital instead.

For all the discussion around a possible change of ownership, the Agnelli family remains the financial backstop.

Barcelona is back. Real Madrid could be next.

Barcelona rejoined European Football Clubs earlier this year, almost five years after the Super League project blew apart the relationship between several of Europe's biggest teams. Real Madrid could soon follow.

EFC chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi told delegates at the organisation's General Assembly in Copenhagen that Madrid was in the process of returning. A source at Real Madrid subsequently described the move to Reuters as a gesture of goodwill.

Barcelona's return is already complete.

It leaves the two Spanish clubs moving back towards an organisation they effectively broke with when the Super League was announced in April 2021.

The organisation itself has changed considerably in the meantime. The European Club Association had 247 members in 2021. Now renamed European Football Clubs, it represents more than 900 clubs in 55 countries.

The commercial operation around it has grown too. EFC and UEFA jointly control UC3, the company responsible for commercialising UEFA's men's club competitions. The next four-year cycle is expected to generate more than €20 billion.

For Barcelona and Real Madrid, returning therefore means rejoining a club organisation which has become larger and more closely involved in the commercial side of European competition since they left it.

It also leaves the Super League in a strange position. Real Madrid and Barcelona spent years fighting UEFA through the courts while continuing to back an alternative European competition. Madrid, UEFA and EFC reached an agreement in principle earlier this year intended to resolve their outstanding disputes. Now Barcelona is back inside EFC and Madrid is moving in the same direction.

Al-Khelaifi is already thinking about something larger. The PSG president used the Copenhagen meeting to float the creation of World Football Clubs, which would attempt to give clubs a global representative organisation rather than limiting the EFC model to Europe. There isn't much detail yet on how it would work.

For now, Barcelona is back inside European Football Clubs and Real Madrid appears to be heading in the same direction.

AZ enters a new era after Eenhoorn and Huiberts

There has been a lot of change at AZ over the past two years.

Robert Eenhoorn left in November 2024 after ten years as general director and Max Huiberts, his long-time director of football, followed this summer. Merijn Zeeman, previously sporting director of the highly successful Visma-Lease a Bike cycling team, is now running the club, with Niels van Duinen taking over the football operation after joining from Excelsior.

They have inherited a club in unusually good financial shape. AZ reported a €10.4 million profit for 2024/25 and finished the year with €82.3 million of equity. Revenue was only €59.3 million, compared with €178.1 million at Ajax, €171 million at PSV and €160 million at Feyenoord in the same season.

That gap has existed for years. AZ doesn't have the stadium, commercial income or regular Champions League money of the traditional big three, but under Eenhoorn and Huiberts it became one of the best player-development operations in the Netherlands.

AFAS Stadion in Alkmaar in June 2025. AZ enters a new era after the departures of Robert Eenhoorn and Max Huiberts.

Photo: Michielverbeek · CC BY 4.0

Teun Koopmeiners came through the academy before joining Atalanta, Myron Boadu and Calvin Stengs were sold to Monaco and Nice, Tijjani Reijnders went to AC Milan and Milos Kerkez to Bournemouth. The academy also won the UEFA Youth League in 2023.

AZ has supplemented that with players bought specifically with development in mind. Vangelis Pavlidis arrived from Willem II before being sold to Benfica, while Yukinari Sugawara came from Japan via Sint-Truiden and eventually moved to Southampton.

The sales have continued since Eenhoorn left. Ruben van Bommel, Jayden Addai, David Møller Wolfe, Ernest Poku and Myron van Brederode were all sold in the summer of 2025. Those deals came after the June 30 year-end and weren't included in the accounts which showed the €10.4 million profit.

This summer brought another round of departures. Sven Mijnans moved to PSV after arriving from Sparta Rotterdam in January 2023, while Troy Parrott was sold to Real Betis two years after AZ bought him from Tottenham. Parrott scored 51 times in 97 games for the club.

The reliance on that income is visible in AZ's accounts. The club recorded an underlying loss of €6.7 million in 2024/25 before the result from transfers and player amortisation was included.

Eenhoorn and Huiberts also provided unusual continuity at senior level. Eenhoorn ran the business, Huiberts ran football and AZ largely avoided the regular changes of coach, sporting director and strategy seen elsewhere in the Eredivisie.

Zeeman is an unusual replacement. He spent years in elite cycling rather than football and was one of the architects of the Visma-Lease a Bike team that won the Tour de France with Jonas Vingegaard. AZ appointed him because of that record in performance, organisation and talent development rather than conventional football experience.

Van Duinen is a more traditional football appointment. He spent four seasons as technical manager at Excelsior before joining AZ this summer to replace Huiberts.

There has been no attempt to rip up what was already there. AZ continues to use its academy heavily, continues to buy younger players and continues to sell when the price is right. The club is doing it with roughly a third of the revenue generated by Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord and with €82.3 million sitting in equity.

The first full season with Zeeman and Van Duinen together will provide the clearest indication yet of how much of the Eenhoorn-Huiberts model has survived the change.

Vitória is showing everyone what it actually pays for players

Vitória de Guimarães has started publishing details of its transfers which most clubs leave out of the announcement.

The Portuguese club's Transfer Transparency Portal includes purchase prices, intermediary payments and sell-on percentages retained by former clubs.

Victor Andersson is one example. Vitória paid AIK €700,000 for the Swedish winger, with AIK retaining 10% of the net value of a future transfer. Arnel Jakupovic cost €600,000 from Osijek, which retained 30% of the net value of a future transfer.

Estádio D. Afonso Henriques in Guimarães in August 2012. Vitória's new transparency portal publishes transfer fees, intermediary payments and sell-on percentages.

Photo: Vitor Oliveira · CC BY-SA 2.0

The second figure could end up being much more valuable than the original transfer fee. If Jakupovic develops and is eventually sold for several million euros, a sizeable part of the proceeds will go back to Croatia.

The disclosures around Alan are just as interesting. He joined Vitória at the end of his Moreirense contract and didn't require a transfer fee. Vitória nevertheless paid €400,000 to intermediary Miguel Pinho as part of the deal.

Calling Alan a free transfer isn't technically wrong, but it doesn't tell you how much money Vitória had to spend to sign him.

The same problem applies when looking at reported transfer profits. If a player is bought for €600,000 and sold for €6 million, the obvious conclusion is that his club made €5.4 million. That isn't necessarily true if 30% of the sale belongs to the previous club, an agent is entitled to another payment and bonuses were attached to the original deal.

Vitória is providing enough information for those calculations to be made properly and it will become particularly useful in a couple of years.

If Andersson or Jakupovic is sold, the original cost and the former club's interest in the transaction are already on the record.

No digging through old transfer reports will be required to work out roughly what Vitória made.