The number of European football club takeovers halved last year, as high valuations, legal disputes and a slowdown in the market for broadcast rights hit investor appetite. Just 23 clubs in Europe changed hands in 2024, according to figures from Uefa due to be published this week in its annual report on football finance.
The figure is a steep drop from the 44 that were sold in
2023, and the 48 in 2022, a year that included record-breaking deals for
Chelsea FC, AC Milan and Olympique Lyonnais. After the £2.5bn sale of
Chelsea, several elite clubs explored sales, including Manchester United and
Liverpool FC. But in both cases, the clubs’ US owners ultimately sold minority
stakes.
Several other English clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur,
Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham, have been seeking new investors, but
none have reached deals. After decades of uninterrupted growth in the
value of broadcast rights, football clubs have been adjusting to a marked
cooling in the market, with fewer pay TV operators willing to compete.
Top leagues in France and Italy agreed their latest
broadcast deals at reduced rates, while the Premier League managed a 4 per cent
increase but with a 40 per cent jump in the number of televised matches on
offer.
Media executives have warned that piracy is making it harder
to justify the high cost of live football broadcast rights. At the Financial Times Business of Football
Summit this week, Sky said it was costing the industry hundreds of millions of
dollars a year.
A spate of legal cases on issues from player transfers to
sponsorships and the launch of new competitions has also created a much less
predictable environment, which sports bankers and football executives said had
damped demand from investors.
Tougher European spending rules, designed to curb
rising costs, have also made it harder for new owners to have an immediate
impact because of their more limited ability to invest. Most clubs in European
football continue to lose money. Since he became a shareholder in Manchester
United last year, British chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has carried
out several rounds of cost-cutting. The club says this is partly to free up
money to increase investment in the squad.
Uefa said the situation was evolving, with “an increased
prevalence of minority investments as investors seek to get a foothold in a
club”. More than a third of the 96 clubs in the top five European leagues had
“ties with private capital investors”, in the form of private equity, venture
capital or specialist debt funds, it said.
Despite the drop-off in takeovers, some existing investors
are on the hunt for deals. Stephen Pagliuca, the US private equity executive
and majority owner of Italian side Atalanta, told the Business of Football
Summit he was considering increasing his football investments. “We’re looking
at other clubs because I think there is some synergy,” he said, adding that
multi-club ownership was “good for football”.
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