Newcastle United’s owners injected a further £95 million ($127.8m) into the club as equity in October, filings at UK Companies House show. The cash injection, Newcastle’s 11th since the club was taken over by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), takes owner funding at the club to almost £600m since that deal was struck in October 2021. The latest equity raise is the first at St James’ Park since the announcement, in April, that the PIF was ceasing its funding of LIV Golf, a rebel league which failed to turn masses of PIF funding into anything resembling a viable business. That had raised the idea PIF would seek to scale back other sporting investments too, and the fund sold a 70 per cent stake in Saudi Pro League club Al Hilal around the same time. With Newcastle having been heavily reliant on owner funding in the past half-decade, there were concerns purse strings may be tightened on Tyneside. The Athletic reported then that club figures were expecti...
Now is the era of the sports lawyer in football Northridge have just 41 lawyers and a turnover of £16.5m. but they are increasingly movers and shakers. Founded in 2017, Northridge has grown into one of the largest dedicated sports practices in Europe. Its lawyers advise athletes, clubs, governing bodies, investors and sponsors across the commercial, regulatory and contentious sides of sport. Some of the world’s richest investors, including the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, paid more than £2bn for a 38 per cent stake in Liverpool Football Club in August, amid speculation over the club’s future. Northridge advised K5 Sports, a fund backed by Bezos, on its part in the acquisition by 1892 Holdings, a consortium led by the former Queens Park Rangers chairman Amit Bhatia which also includes the Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. The deal valued the club at £5.5bn. It could ultimately pave the way for a change of control at Anfield, with the consortium given first refusal to a...