FootBiz Newsletter No. 207: KKR’s Founders Buy Into Valencia, But Peter Lim Stays in Control

Good morning.

Two of private equity’s biggest names buy into Valencia, leaving Peter Lim in charge. Sheikh Mansour puts another £100 million into City Football Group as Manchester City appeals its guilty verdict. Barcelona breaks its gate record despite losing the Clásico, INEOS reportedly puts Lausanne up for sale, and finance firms replace bookmakers on shirt fronts across Europe’s Big Five leagues.

KKR’s Founders Buy 42% of Valencia and Leave Peter Lim in Charge

Valencia is getting new capital, but not a change of control. Pitchwise Holdings will inject €100 million and buy shares from Peter Lim’s Meriton Holdings to take a 42% stake. Meriton remains the majority shareholder and Lim’s son Kiat stays on as president. Supporters who have spent years protesting against Lim will not get the change many wanted.

Backing Pitchwise are Henry Kravis and George Roberts, two of the best-known names in private equity and the co-founders and co-executive chairmen of KKR.

Photo: MCorellacas · CC0 · Resized; uncropped.

The deal values Valencia at €1.25 billion on an enterprise basis. The club says that figure covers the men’s and women’s teams and the stadium project.

Pitchwise is led by Ann Rodriguez and Corey Woolfolk. Rodriguez’s career includes Atlanta United, the San Jose Earthquakes, the WNBA and the LA28 organising committee. Woolfolk played professionally in the US for a decade before working in venture capital and investing in clubs in Europe and South America.

Greg and Carrie Penner’s Penner Sports Group, which has interests in the Denver Broncos and Colorado Rockies, is also in the consortium. Completion is subject to regulatory approval.

The investors are buying into a club preparing to leave Mestalla. Nou Mestalla is planned to hold more than 70,000 spectators, compared with roughly 49,000 at the current ground, with nearly a tenth of its seats set aside for hospitality.

Valencia raised €322 million for it in June 2025. An €85 million five-year slice of that financing is due to be repaid from the sale of the old ground once the new one is finished.

Chief executive Javier Solís told Movistar+ that the money would go “to the pitch and also to facilities”, but the squad may see little of it this season. Cadena SER estimates that the €100 million creates only €10 million to €12 million of extra room under La Liga’s squad-cost limit. Lim’s conversion of €35 million of debt in the summer had already used part of the annual allowance.

Sporting director Braulio Vázquez had warned before the Athletic game on 18 October that Valencia had “few licences and a restricted fair play”. After losing 2–1 to Villarreal, head coach Javier Aguirre said nobody had told him anything about January signings.

Mansour Adds £100 Million to City Football Group While City Appeals Its Verdict

Fifteen days after Manchester City was found guilty of breaking the Premier League’s financial rules, its owner put another £100 million into City Football Group, the group that owns it. Companies House filings show that more than 11.3 million new shares were allotted on 14 October. A CFG spokesperson told City AM that Newton Investment and Development, Sheikh Mansour’s vehicle, bought them.

The independent commission found City guilty on 29 September of all the charges relating to financial breaches between 2009 and 2018, and most of the charges concerning its co-operation with the investigation. City has appealed, saying the decision contains “clear material errors of law, principle and fact”.

Mansour has increased his stake while that appeal is pending. CFG called the money “equity from our largest shareholder” for “normal corporate purposes against our strategic plans”. City AM reports that he now owns around 81%, with US private equity firm Silver Lake holding most of the rest.

Photo: Peter McDermott · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Resized; uncropped.

The group is also funding its smaller clubs. Belgian club Lommel has converted €23 million of debt into equity, according to De Tijd. Interim chief executive Nick Rondelez has run the club since August, after Mattijs Manders left. Capital increases since 2022 now total €98.8 million, close to €100 million for a club that has only just reached the Jupiler Pro League.

Barcelona Takes a Record €19.1 Million From a Clásico It Lost

Real Madrid won Sunday’s Clásico 2–1 at the Spotify Camp Nou as Barcelona recorded the biggest gate in its history. Ticket revenue reached €19.1 million, beating the €16.5 million from May’s Clásico. The crowd of 62,055 was slightly smaller than May’s 62,213.

Revenue per spectator rose from about €265 in May to about €308 on Sunday. Mundo Deportivo, whose figures club sources confirmed to EFE, attributes the near-16% increase to higher ticket prices, dynamic pricing and additional VIP seats.

There is still room for growth. The record crowd was only about three-fifths of the finished stadium’s planned capacity of roughly 105,000, and only around 5,000 of the 9,500 planned VIP seats are in use.

Photo: Pere López Brosa · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Resized; uncropped.

The stadium shop also passed €800,000 in a day for the first time on Sunday. Barça Licensing & Merchandising has grown annual sales from €80 million in 2018 to more than €200 million, yet 24 of its 25 shops are in Spain. Palco23 reports that it now wants partners to take the network abroad, with the US and major European cities among the options.

Treasurer Ferran Olivé has cited an earlier outside valuation of about €800 million for the subsidiary. The club says it has no immediate intention of selling 49% of it, so expansion abroad will be through operating partners.

INEOS Reportedly Puts Lausanne Up for Sale

INEOS has appointed Alvarez & Marsal to find a buyer for Lausanne-Sport, according to The Athletic. The move comes almost nine years after Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s group bought the Swiss club in November 2017.

A five-page prospectus sent to potential investors under the name Project Striker promotes the chance of European qualification and the club’s relatively inexpensive infrastructure arrangements. Football Today, in its account of the report, says the club faces losses approaching £5 million this season.

Chief executive Vincent Steinmann took over the full running of the club from president Leen Heemskerk. In a March interview with Blick, he said Lausanne pays 150 salaries at the end of each month for around 100 full-time jobs. The club is not financially self-sufficient, he said, and cannot guarantee its future unless it grows revenue.

In the same interview, Steinmann announced a sponsorship extension with INEOS until at least 2029, worth an amount he described as running into “millions, plural”. He said INEOS could in theory remain a sponsor after selling the club. “Nothing points that way at the moment. Nothing. But theoretically, yes,” he told the paper.

Hellmann Holds Up Bayern’s Share Sale as the Model for 50+1 Clubs

The Bundesliga abandoned a central investor deal in 2024 after months of fan protests. Now one of the league’s most senior executives says Bayern Munich has shown how clubs can sell stakes without breaking 50+1.

Bayern has sold the last available block of shares in its football company to the Viessmann family’s investment group. A capital increase announced on Thursday gives the group almost 6.7%, making it the fourth minority shareholder alongside Adidas, Allianz and Audi. Media reports put the price at around €250 million, and Max Viessmann is due to join an enlarged ten-member supervisory board.

Axel Hellmann, Eintracht Frankfurt’s board spokesman and a member of the DFL presidium, called the value Bayern achieved “remarkable” and the deal “a positive signal for the whole Bundesliga”. “We can all conclude from this that stakes are possible while respecting 50+1,” he said. Choosing investors “from a trustworthy environment” was the basic condition, he added. The model leaves Bayern’s members’ association with the 70% its statutes require and four corporate partners with the rest.

Bookmakers Lose Ten Shirt Fronts as Finance Firms Move In

Betting companies have lost ten front-of-shirt deals across Europe’s Big Five leagues in a single season, with finance firms taking much of the space. Football Benchmark’s analysis, reported by Inside World Football on Monday, counts 21 financial-services shirt-front sponsors this season, up from 15. Betting and gaming sponsors fell from 14 to four, mainly because of the Premier League’s voluntary ban on gambling brands on shirt fronts.

Clubs have not lost money in the switch. Ampere Analysis estimates Premier League front-of-shirt revenue rose 8% to £444 million. Eight clubs replaced £67 million of gambling deals with £75 million of new ones.

Chelsea has added another finance partner, signing payments platform Sokin as sleeve sponsor and principal partner in a multi-year deal. Marseille has signed Sendwave, the money-transfer app owned by the Zepz group, as a premium partner for this season.

Bookmakers have moved down the kit rather than off it. Football Benchmark counts nine betting deals on sleeves, up from six. Ampere estimates betting firms now account for 20% of Premier League sleeve spending, against 3% a year earlier. Stake, Everton’s former front-of-shirt sponsor, now sits on the sleeve.

A University of Bristol study published last week counted 563 betting-marketing appearances on sleeves and training kit during the Premier League’s televised opening weekend, against a pre-restriction average of about 122.

Benfica’s Player-Trading Model Delivers a Second Year of Profit

Benfica has topped the CIES Football Observatory’s ranking of the world’s best training clubs. On Friday, it also reported a second consecutive year in profit.

The group’s 2025/26 accounts show a net profit of €23.9 million and an operating result of €39.4 million. The result from player-rights transactions rose 2.2% to €47.2 million, which O Jogo attributes mainly to lower spending on player registrations and intermediaries.

Player deals keep the group in the black. Operating income excluding player rights came to €274.8 million against costs of €282.5 million. Benfica’s ordinary business therefore still loses money before player sales, even with matchday revenue up 9% to €68.5 million. Members vote on the accounts on 31 October, and president Rui Costa has reaffirmed a target of €500 million in annual consolidated revenue.

Photo: Vitor Oliveira · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Resized; uncropped.

CIES ranks clubs by the players they developed between the ages of 15 and 21. The ranking is weighted by the level of their matches, playing time and age. Benfica finished ahead of River Plate, Boca Juniors and Vélez Sarsfield. Ajax was fifth, and Barcelona sixth as the highest-placed club from the Big Five leagues.

Birmingham Hires Manchester United’s First Football Director

Birmingham City has hired John Murtough to build a team for the stadium its owners are planning. He started as director of football on Monday after leaving Atalanta, where he had been director of global development since April 2025. He replaces Craig Gardner, who left in June after five years in charge of the club’s football department.

The board, chaired by Knighthead co-founder Tom Wagner, linked the appointment to the owner’s spending. “The Sports Quarter demonstrates the scale of that ambition, and we need a football operation to match,” it said, adding that it wants Birmingham “competing at the highest level of English football”. Knighthead completed its full takeover in November 2025 and is developing the Sports Quarter around a proposed new stadium.

Murtough will oversee the club’s overall football strategy across the first team, academy, recruitment, performance, data and football operations, working with head coach Chris Davies. Technical director Mike Rigg left at the end of August after helping restore the academy’s Category One status. Academy manager Louisa Collis now has sole charge, with a technical team that includes Scott Sellars.

Murtough joined United in November 2013 to support David Moyes, with whom he had worked at Everton. He left in April 2024 after just over three years as football director.

A Bosman Lawyer Loses His Fight With UEFA’s Homegrown Quotas

Jean-Louis Dupont, one of the lawyers behind the Bosman ruling, has lost his latest attempt to overturn UEFA’s homegrown-player rules. He was part of the legal team for Royal Antwerp and former player Lior Refaelov. City AM called their defeat in Brussels a shock, given the European Court of Justice’s qualified backing for the case in 2023.

The Court of First Instance refused to overturn an earlier arbitration award and found the restrictions justified and proportionate. A further challenge in cassation remains possible.

A player qualifies as locally trained through three seasons or 36 months of registration during UEFA’s youth-training period, whatever his nationality. Refaelov holds Belgian nationality but arrived in the country at 25, so he did not count. Unless a cassation appeal succeeds, clubs unable to find eight locally trained players for a 25-man UEFA squad list will still have to register fewer players.