Skip to main content

Is the multi club model a good thing?

Is multi-club ownership really such a positive thing? And as so often, it is a question the game has never really faced up to, preferring to stand by and do nothing for years before finally stopping to wonder if it is now so widespread that they might as well just legitimise it.

The arguments in favour of multi-club ownership are clear. As well as the Red Bull empire, you could just look at the success of the City Football Group.  It's a road Chelsea are planning to go down.

City are at the top of the tree, Premier League champions for four of the past five seasons. But Melbourne City (men and women), New York City, Mumbai City and Yokohama F Marinos have won league titles as part of the group and Girona, Troyes and Montevideo City Torque have won promotions, all of them benefiting from a shared network of players, coaches and scouts as well as data, knowledge, infrastructure and strategy.

With the investment of Brighton & Hove Albion owner-chairman Tony Bloom, Royal Union Saint-Gilloise have not only been promoted to the Belgian top tier for the first time in 49 years but finished as runners-up last season and are second again now. They took their place in the last -eight of the Europa League draw alongside Manchester United and Juventus.

The potential benefits of belonging to a multi-club network are clear for clubs that have fallen on hard times (as Royal Union had) or clubs that are newly formed (like New York City) or nearly-new (like Mumbai City, Montevideo City Torque, Melbourne City). 

RB Leipzig was spawned from the playing rights of fifth-tier club SSV Markranstadt, while the Red Bull rebranding was nothing new for the club once known as SV Austria Salzburg but named, at various stages, after a supermarket chain and a financial services corporation. Some things are not sacred, particularly when Red Bull are offering to give you wings.

The downsides

But the more entrenched and the more widespread the multi-club model becomes, the more the success stories will come to be outnumbered by the failures. In its annual benchmarking report on the European club football landscape, UEFA stated that no fewer than 82 of its top-tier clubs now have a “cross-investment relationship” with one or more clubs — and it goes without saying that the majority of them will not be successful.   The record of Everton bidders 777 is mixed.   The experiment of Roland Duchatelet with Standard Liege, Charlton and other smaller clubs ended in failire.

Sacrificing your club’s identity — signing up to be a satellite of a much bigger club in a much bigger league — might be perfectly acceptable if a) that identity is yet to be fully established, as in the case of some of the City Football Group’s acquisitions or b) there is the promise of success. It will be far harder to tolerate for fans of those clubs whose fortunes decline or even stagnate.

That is the real point here. Football clubs are not pawns. They are socio-cultural institutions which exist to represent and bring pride and joy to their communities (which these days can mean not just the immediate area but a huge global fanbase).

No club, unless established for that purpose, should be a mere satellite to another — or to a sovereign wealth fund, an energy drink manufacturer or anything else. Nor should any club see its entire purpose redefined for the benefit of an investment group which could easily lose interest and allow an underperforming club to fall into managed decline.

The direction of travel is worrying, but nobody seems to question it. The only barrier UEFA has raised relates to its own competitions — and even that one proved easily surmountable for the Red Bull clubs. And now Ceferin is talking about possibly removing that obstacle? Why? Why on earth would UEFA remove rules which exist (in theory) to preserve the integrity of their competitions?

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful.  Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy).  However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch.   Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...