US owners of Leeds will spend to stay in top flight

The US owner of Leeds United football club has promised to spend every “last penny” to try to stay in the Premier League next season, after the club secured promotion back to English football’s top division. Paraag Marathe, chair of Leeds United and president of 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team, said the club would push player spending “to the limits” of what was allowed under the league’s financial regulations.

“Whatever they will let us spend, we’ll spend. I can comfortably say that we are going to spend the very last penny that we can,” he told the Financial Times. Under current Premier League rules, designed to rein in unsustainable spending sprees, clubs that lose more than £105mn over a rolling three-year period are punished.

Marathe suggested Leeds United would raise tens of millions of pounds from its shareholders — a group including energy drinks company Red Bull and real estate investor Peter Lowy — to fund its spending plans. “It’s what we need to go full tilt for the next three years,” he told the Pink ‘Un.

Leeds, who won the Championship title on Saturday with a victory over Plymouth Argyle, face an uphill battle in their mission to stay in the Premier League. This year marked the second consecutive season in which all three promoted sides — Ipswich Town, Leicester City and Southampton — went straight back down to the Championship. The three relegated clubs are on track to record an average of 20.5 points each this season, according to predictions by data provider Opta, which would be the lowest in Premier League history.

Marathe believes Leeds United’s large fan base gives it a better chance of staying up, compared with other recently promoted clubs. The average attendance this season at Elland Road, its home stadium, is more than 36,000, which would have ranked 11th in the Premier League.

“I’m under no illusions that it’s going to be easy . . . there’s an argument to be made that there’s a widening gap [between the Premier League and the Championship],” said Marathe, who has worked in sport for more than two decades. “With all due respect to the other clubs, I think we’re different. We have an opportunity and we have scale that nobody else has,” he said.

49ers Enterprises is planning to increase Elland Road’s capacity by about 20,000 seats, partly to help clear a backlog of almost 30,000 people on the waiting list for season tickets. Marathe said he would like that work to be completed before the 2028/29 season.

49ers Enterprises took control of Leeds United in 2023, after originally investing in 2018. The group is also in talks to take a controlling stake in Glasgow-based Rangers FC. It is one of several US owners to have enjoyed success across the English football pyramid this season.

Liverpool FC, owned by Fenway Sports Group, won the Premier League title with four games to spare. Birmingham City, which is controlled by New York-based hedge fund Knighthead Capital, were League One champions, pipping Wrexham, the team owned by Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Leeds will be joined in the top flight next season by fellow US-owned club Burnley, which finished second in the Championship, taking the total number of Premier League teams with US shareholders to 12 out of 20. Promotion will bring a sharp increase in income for Leeds, with guaranteed media rights payments of more than £100mn for the team finishing bottom of the league.

Marathe said “every single penny” of extra income would be ploughed straight back into the playing squad. “We are not taking any dividends out of the club, nor will we ever. This is just about trying to make money to put it right back in, get us as competitive as we can be,” he said.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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