European football takeovers halve

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”.