Are Everton bidders serious?

 It’s time to take Josh Wander seriously. So says Wander, co-founder of 777 Partners, which is on the verge of adding a stake in Everton to its rapidly-assembled collection of football club investments any day now. 

Wander and his partner Steven Pasko were unknown to the sports world when their Miami investment firm bought 15 per cent of Sevilla in 2018 but have since invested hundreds of millions of dollars in seven clubs from Hertha Berlin to Melbourne Victory.

Everton — the subject of a Premier League investigation and weighed down by ballooning stadium costs — would be 777’s first Premier League team but its latest in a string of, to put it politely, financial underperformers. 

As with a number of these multiclub outfits — outsiders have wondered where 777’s money came from, when will it see a return on its investment and what do American finance guys know about the beautiful game. 

In a Financial Times interview, Wander said the “haters” were “absurd” to think 777 was not serious. “Is there anyone in the world that’s been more serious about buying football clubs in history than Josh Wander?”

His firm has a $9bn-$10bn balance sheet, he said, and a goal of making its football division profitable by next season. 777 had paid attractive prices for clubs with poor commercial records but “highly monetisable” connections to their fans that had yet to be realised, because “that’s where the most convexity was”. 

Wander’s pitch is that “multiclub” owners will benefit from economies of scale, tempting a future star with the chance to move from Vasco da Gama in Brazil to Standard Liège in Belgium, or a great executive with the opportunity to influence seven or eight clubs.

Unlike other multiclub operators, Wander insists 777 is not about building a pyramid of feeder clubs. “We’re hopeful that all of our teams can be Champions League winners someday.”

He laments that 777’s football deals have put it in a brighter spotlight and attracted coverage of “salacious” matters including a 2003 cocaine trafficking arrest (“a stupid college thing”) that led to him being put on probation. 

But if any officials are questioning its suitability as a club owner, he says they should not. The firm has satisfied insurance regulators, aviation authorities, rating agencies and banks around the world, he notes: “There are people out there who find us credible”.