Hope of effective new ownership at Wedensday

 Sheffield Wednesday should have a 55,000-capacity stadium, one of England’s best academies and be “way bigger than Wrexham”, according to the co-leader of a North American group trying to buy the crisis-hit Championship club.

The four-time title winners are the second-oldest professional club in English football, and were founding members of the Premier League in 1992, but they dropped out of the top flight in 2000 and have spent the 25 years since yo-yoing between the second and third tiers.

Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiri bought the South Yorkshire side in 2015 — and initially spent heavily on a push for the Premier League — but that financial support has long since dried up and Wednesday are yet to meet all of their wage bill for May, having also been late with April’s payments.

Having first said he would sell the club in late 2018, only to place a Premier League-level valuation on the business, Chansiri’s price tag is coming down fast and he is in talks with two U.S.-based groups about a sale.

One of those parties wants to remain under the radar for the time being but has hired a club broker from the UK to negotiate with Chansiri on its behalf. But the other has chosen to go public with its interest, with Florida-based property investor John Flanagan giving an interview to the local BBC radio station last week and his partner in the venture, Adam Shaw, a Sheffield-born businessman based in the same U.S. state, now speaking exclusively to The Athletic.

“Sheffield Wednesday are nowhere in America. We sell zero shirts and have no commercial presence there — that’s got to change,” says Shaw, a lifelong Wednesday fan. “With the World Cup in the U.S. next year and with the individuals we have in our ownership group, we could easily become Florida’s English football team.

“We should and can be way bigger than Wrexham. Ryan Reynolds would give his left leg to have what we already have at Wednesday in terms of our history and fanbase. Let’s use that.”

Neither Flanagan nor Shaw has wanted to reveal the identities of their investment partners, but the latter says the 16-strong group includes current and former Major League Baseball players, an ex-Premier League star and, if the deal can be done, a well-known celebrity.

The Wrexham comparison

He is adamant the star power of this group would have the same transformative impact at Wednesday that Wrexham’s owners Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have had since their arrival in north Wales. The Hollywood duo paid £2million to buy the club, then in the fifth-tier National League, in 2021 but sold a minority stake in the team, now in the Championship with Wednesday after three straight promotions, earlier this year which valued them at £100m. And now, according to reports, they are looking for new partners at a valuation of £350m.

While most football finance experts believe that is an unrealistic price for a newly-promoted second-division side with a relatively small stadium, no training ground and no real tradition of developing players, every expert believes McElhenney and Reynolds have a much better chance of attracting investment at that level than Chansiri, as that was his original asking price, too.

That number has fallen as Wednesday’s recurring annual losses, late payments and English Football League (EFL) sanctions have piled up but Chansiri is still holding out for significantly more than what anyone has put on the table, so far.

Shaw, who has been speaking to Chansiri about buying the club for two years, says his group offered $65million (£48m), with a significant chunk of that in performance-related bonus payments, in April. That was flatly rejected, so the group returned the following month with a bid of a guaranteed $75m, only to receive short shrift once more.

Chansiri seems to believe Wednesday’s history, large stadium and loyal fanbase are worth a premium on top of the usual valuation for Championship clubs, which is about double a side’s annual revenue. Wednesday earned just over £26million in the 2023-24 season, their first back in the Championship after two years in League One, which would suggest an enterprise value in the £50m to £55m range.

For comparison, American investor Shilen Patel bought second-tier side West Bromwich Albion for £60m last year, while British businessman David Clowes paid £55m to rescue Derby County from bankruptcy in 2022, shortly after their relegation from the same division.

Chansiri, of course, is probably thinking more about the £105million that U.S.-based investors Steve Rosen and Helmy Eltoukhy paid for Wednesday’s city rivals Sheffield United last Christmas, although United were vying for promotion out of the Championship at the time, have Premier League-level facilities and are still in receipt of parachute payments following their 2024 relegation from the top flight.

Shaw believes Wednesday could and should be worth more than neighbours United one day, too, but the road back from years of fan unrest, too many managers and not enough investment will require radical thinking.

The 47-year-old, who runs a mental-health platform and publishing business called Triggerhub, says his group would immediately upgrade Wednesday’s academy and training ground, renovate their near 35,000-capacity Hillsborough stadium and lean into their American contacts to boost commercial revenues.

Looking further ahead, “perhaps five years”, Shaw’s group would like to move Wednesday away to a new, 55,000-capacity ground.

“We wouldn’t do anything without consulting the fans, but we think the club should have a home where people can park more easily and have up-to-date facilities,” he says. “If we want to create a culture that ensures we become a sustainable, competitive and successful Premier League side, then we must be proactive. Premier League clubs are all upgrading their stadiums.”

Whether Shaw and his partners — or the other group in takeover talks — will ever get the chance to deliver any of their plans is likely to depend on Chansiri’s tolerance for bad news.

His most recent failure to pay his staff on time means the club have been in arrears for more than 30 days in the past 12 months, which brings an automatic three-window registration ban. That sanction cannot be published on the EFL website under its current rules but the league is in the process of changing these so that three-window bans can also be listed.

The EFL has also charged Chansiri personally for breaching regulation 21.2.2, which states that a club owner should not take, or omit to take, any action that would result in breaking the rules.

With the main source of the Chansiri fortune, the family’s stake in the world’s largest tuna producer, Thai Union Group, under pressure from U.S. tariffs and a plummeting share price, pressure is mounting to sell up.