Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez is in election mode. He says the Spanish football giants are worth €10bn and rising. “In a few years it will be worth €20bn,” he told the Financial Times this week. He’s not the only one who thinks his club’s value has hit 11 figures. Manchester City chair Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who also leads Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, says the club has multiplied in value since Sheikh Mansour first bought in at an estimated valuation of $100mn-$120mn in 2008. “If you’re going to sell all this today in the market, you wouldn’t sell it for less than $10 billion minimum,” Khaldoon said in his annual interview published by City. He went on to say the club wasn’t for sale, just to be clear. So far only the Los Angeles Lakers have hit the $10bn mark, although the Seattle Seahawks might soon join them. Minority deals are getting done in that ball park too. But can a football team really be worth that much? Real Madrid have been crowned champion...
Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion. Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs. An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...