New York Jets owner Woody Johnson is set to become the largest shareholder in Premier League club Crystal Palace after agreeing a deal to purchase Eagle Football’s 43 per cent stake in the south London club.
Johnson will become the fourth general partner — subject to
approval by the Premier League and Women’s Super League — with Eagle’s chairman
John Textor relinquishing his role by selling to the 78-year-old.
Since December 2015, Palace’s ownership structure has been
complicated. Originally, chairman Steve Parish was joined by U.S. businessmen
Josh Harris and David Blitzer when they bought into Palace and a general
partnership structure was formed. That left the three with equal rights over
decision-making.
In 2021, with Palace seeking new investment to help complete
their £30million ($41m) academy redevelopment and pay off debt accrued during
the Covid-19 pandemic, John Textor bought a 40 per cent share for £87.5m. That
shareholding was later increased to 45 per cent and then diluted down to 43 per
cent, with Textor also transferring it to his newly formed Eagle Football
multi-club company.
That has left Palace with four general partners, who each
have 25 per cent of the voting rights regardless of their individual holdings.
Parish is the executive chairman and has led decision-making since he arrived
at the club in 2010, when he was one of four supporters to buy it out of
administration. There are a significant number of smaller shareholders with
minor stakes, but who have a very limited say in the running of the club, and
many of those form part of Harris and Blitzer’s group.
Harris and Blitzer are generally supportive of Parish’s
decisions and are effectively ‘silent partners’ who prefer to stay in the
background and trust Parish to run the club. While Textor was not aligned with
the other partners, Johnson is likely to be more akin to Blitzer and Harris in
his approach as the fourth partner.
Regardless of anything else, Johnson will be stepping into a
club that is effectively run solely by Parish, owns its stadium and training
ground, has a revamped state of the art academy, is financially secure with
only a small amount of debt, and is enjoying the most stable and longest period
of success in its 120-year history.
Johnson was President Donald Trump’s pick as the United
States ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2017 to 2021 and is estimated to
hold a net worth of $3.3billion (£2.5bn), per Forbes.
The 78-year-old has owned the Jets since 2000, paying $635m
for them — at the time the third-highest fee ever paid for a sports
franchise. Johnson was unsuccessful in his pursuit of a deal to buy
Premier League club Chelsea in 2022, but has had his eye on a top-flight side
in England for some time.
His reputation as an owner, however, is not the best. With
the Jets, he was considered to be an over-involved, impulsive owner, The
Athletic reported in December following conversations with
current and former players, coaches and team executives. He is also said by
sources in that same reporting to have denigrated his own players in the locker
room and seemed to follow decision-making advice from his teenage sons.
It is not expected that Johnson will play a significant role
in the way the club is run, although he will work with the other partners where
relevant and is happy to be involved. That would seem to largely negate some of
the criticisms levelled at him, as they appear to largely be focused on how he
has run the Jets, a role he would not have at Palace.
In his favour is his experience in the UK as a diplomat and
familiarity with both the UK and London, while he is likely to have encountered
Harris, owner of the Washington Commanders and a fellow Republican Party donor,
and both Harris and Blitzer, who own stakes in multiple American sports teams.
His wealth, which comes both from his successful business ventures while also
being heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, if he is willing to invest in
Palace, will not be a sticking point as it might have been with other potential
investors.
This appears to be a marriage of convenience that works, to
a degree, for everyone — at least for now. Johnson finally has his investment
in an English club, Textor is now free to move for another English club where
he has total control of decision making to help with the value of his IPO, and
Parish removes a thorn in his side who has repeatedly questioned his approach.
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