The Political Economy of Football V2

  Cartoon copyright Private Eye Instability in leadership seems the fashion today.  We have had the greatest turnover of prime ministers in the democratic era.  An article in the Financial Times this week revealed an increase in changes in the CEOs of companies, in part driven by so-called 'active investors'. But football has some of the shortest tenures of all.  Since 2011 there have been 23 managers at Watford and 18 at Forest with Sean Dyche managing both teams. Forest are the first team since the league's formation in 1888 to have four permanent managers in one season, although Leyton Orient hold the all comers' record with five in 2016/17. Has it brought Watford or Forest success?

Leyton Orient majority owner David Gandler wants the League One club to build one of the world’s “most technologically advanced” stadiums in time for their 150th anniversary in 2031. This multi-purpose home, which will cost “hundreds of millions of pounds”, will sit in an environmentally-friendly campus that should create more than 1,500 new jobs and enable Orient’s current Brisbane Road stadium to be “unlocked” for new housing. Gandler, who took control in April, was speaking to  The Athletic  on the day Orient revealed they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to work together on the new stadium project. “We want to stay in Waltham Forest, ideally in Leyton,” said Gandler. “That’s the premise of our relationship. Gandler did not want to say too much on stadium size as he wants to talk to the club’s fans about it first, but he suggested he is thinking about a ground at least twice Brisbane Road’s capacity of 9,000, where ...

50-year-old entrepreneur  David Gandler wants to turn Leyton Orient into a multi-sports enterprise along the lines of Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid. Orient have been on an upward trajectory ever since local-lad-made-good Nigel Travis bought them in 2017. They had just been relegated to the fifth tier of English football and were reeling from three years of calamitous mismanagement under Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti. There have been two promotions since then, several American investors have joined the gang, and improvements have been made to Orient’s cramped but charming Brisbane Road ground. But Orient have continued to lose money, which is why Travis had been looking for further help when a mutual acquaintance connected him and Gandler before Christmas. The National Basketball Association has spotted that Europe quite likes basketball, but the continent’s best teams are in cities such as Athens, Belgrade and Lithuania’s Kaunas, as opposed to ea...

American consortium GSG LOFC Limited, led by New York businessman David Gandler, has completed a takeover of English League One club Leyton Orient. The group has acquired 100 per cent of the east London club from its previous owner Eagle Investments 2017 Limited. Gandler, who is also the co-founder and CEO of streaming service FuboTV, will be the majority shareholder, owning 78.55% of the club. “Our aim is to become a Championship club in the future,” he said. “We hope to achieve this by making sensible investments in our playing squad and off-pitch projects. Whilst we are very ambitious, we will not spend recklessly and will never make decisions that could jeopardise the future of this special football club.

An American consortium is close to sealing a £18m bid for Leyton Orient:  https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/27/us-based-consortium-close-to-ambitious-18m-takeover-of-leyton-orient American investors have become increasingly interested in franchises in lower division clubs seeing them as offering better value.   Orient are still in contention for a play off place this season.

Why would one buy a club like Leyton Orient? The answer given by Nigel Travis is that he has been in love with it for sixty years: People said I'd be an idiot to buy this club More solid business reasons are that the club has heritage, a great stadium and there's no hassle getting tickets. Travis argues: 'For many London football fans, it seems that Orient is their second team. That shows we've got true latent support and there's an opportunity for us.' Getting out of the National League is not easy with just one automatic promotion place, but once they have achieved this, Orient could recapture former glories. Well, of a kind.