It’s no longer just accountants who are the biggest financial service providers in football, lawyers are increasingly finding it a source of lucrative business. It is no accident that Manchester City have some of the best lawyers advising them.
The next step was likely to be private equity, already invested in clubs, taking a stake in a law firm. A boutique UK law firm behind some of the biggest football deals has taken an
investment from a US private equity group, in a sign of the growing interest
from private capital in both the legal and sports industries. San Francisco’s
Cordillera Investment Partners has taken a minority stake in Northridge Law,
whose clients include English Premier League football clubs such as Chelsea.
The deal, which will give Cordillera a board seat at
Northridge, comes as private capital has shown an increasing appetite to invest
in professional services firms. Several legal and accounting firms have taken
investments over the past two years, with many private equity investors seeking
opportunities in the highly profitable sector. The transaction also highlights
the growing investment from private capital groups in sports.
CVC has invested in football, rugby and tennis in recent
years, while KKR agreed a $1.4bn deal last month to buy sports investment group
Arctos Partners. Northridge, which was founded in 2017, advised Chelsea on its
2022 sale — then the biggest sports transaction in history — after its previous
owner, the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, was placed under international
sanctions following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It also represented
Al-Nassr on the Saudi Arabian club’s 2023 signing of Cristiano Ronaldo, a deal
that handed the Portuguese footballer one of the biggest-ever player contracts
in sport. It advised on Red Bull’s minority investment in Leeds United and on
the sale of Everton Football Club to the Friedkin Group, while other clients
have included the Football Association and Spotify.
“The emergence of sport as an investible asset class,
and in particular the influx of private capital into the industry, has driven
the growth of our transactional practice,” Ian Lynam, one of Northridge’s
founding partners, told the Financial Times. “This investment from Cordillera
will help us to continue to add the very best lawyers in new areas to broaden
our offering.”
Some of the world’s biggest law firms have been expanding
their practices to take advantage of such demand. Kirkland & Ellis and
Latham & Watkins, which are the world’s largest law firms by revenue and
advise many of the largest private equity houses, have both hired several
partners for their US sports practices over the past year. Lynam said that
Northridge, which projects that its revenues of £13.4mn in 2025 will more than
double by 2030, is looking to expand into media rights and stadium development.
The 44-lawyer boutique has been fielding approaches from private equity firms
for the last two years, he added. The size of Cordillera’s investment is
undisclosed.
Cordillera, which was set up in 2014 and invests in niche
assets whose returns are not correlated with equity stocks, such as whisky
barrels and boating marinas, already has investments in women’s soccer and
London’s Professional Triathletes Organisation.
The firm said it was looking to invest in the “toll takers”
in sport — the businesses that advise on deals — rather than in specific sports
teams. “Sports is a really interesting hunting ground for us to look for
non-correlated assets,” said Chris Heller, co-founder of Cordillera, adding
that the firm may open a London office in future.
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