Swansea City: an example of bad business in football

An example of some bad business in football: the 2016 takeover of Swansea City (Dinas Abertawe) by a group of U.S. investors led by Steve Kaplan, who owns a minority stake in the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, and Jason Levien, the co-chairman and CEO of MLS side D.C. United.

Swansea were nearing the end of their fifth consecutive season in the Premier League when Kaplan and Levien bought a majority stake in the Welsh club at a valuation of £110million. Unfortunately, they were relegated to the Championship in 2018 and have haemorrhaged money in that division ever since.

But now — for Kaplan and Levien, at least — the bleeding has stopped, as they have sold their 65 per cent stake in Swansea to three investors they first introduced to the club last year: Andy Coleman, Brett Cravatt and Nigel Morris.

A shareholder at D.C. United, Coleman has been Swansea’s chairman since May 2023, while private-equity firm boss Cravatt and Welsh-American fintech entrepreneur Morris have been on the board for over a year, too. Cravatt’s business partner Jason Cohen is joining the gang, too.

One of several rather disgruntled fellow investors sent The Athletic the email Kaplan and Levien wrote to shareholders in Swansea Football Holdings, the club’s parent company, explaining why they were selling up and the deal they had secured.

They reminded everyone how relegation had seen the club’s income fall by 80 per cent, with parachute payments and wage cuts only partially offsetting the pain. Their woes were compounded by the £30million they wasted on transfer fees and three-year contracts for strikers Andre Ayew and Wilfried Bony, in a failed attempt to avoid the drop, and the impact of the pandemic.

There were two promotion play-offs appearances, including a defeat by Brentford in the 2021 final, but once the parachute payments stopped that summer it has been mid-table mediocrity and “substantial operating losses”.

In 2023, after “years of exhaustive searches for alternatives”, they brought in three new investor groups led by Coleman, Cravatt and Morris, in return for an equity injection of over £40million, and now, 18 months further on, “it is this group of investors who are purchasing our interests and committing to make another significant investment in the club”.

Before outlining the terms of the deal in an attachment to the letter, “Jason and Steve” said they had “spent many sleepless nights over the years” worrying about what to do, acknowledged “there are things we would have done differently”, but assured everyone they had “forgone all management fees owed to us since relegation”, before asking them to “take some solace in that we never burdened you with a capital call”.

“This is an outstanding group of partners,” they added. “It pains us that this investment did not work out financially.”

So, just how bad was it? There are three parts to the deal.

The first is a commitment by the newish investors to fund the club with a minimum of £20million in new equity. The second is a series of share transactions that hand over control of Swansea City to Cohen, Coleman, Cravatt and Morris for the grand total of $3,000, or £2,370.

And the last is an “inducement agreement” between the club, on one side, and Kaplan, Levien and their investors, on the other, with the latter receiving an additional £10million for every season Swansea spend in the Premier League between now and May 2035, capped at a maximum of £40m.

Does that give investors a fair chance of getting some more money back or is it just condemning them to another decade of dashed hopes? Dwi ddim yn gwybod.

One of my granddaughters is now going to Swansea every weekend to see a new boy friend, so if he turns out to be a supporter, I may learn more.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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