The Political Economy of Football V2

The UK’s financial watchdog has fined and banned a British financier over bids he made to buy a bank and Reading Football Club, during which he falsely claimed to own a €200mn bond portfolio.  Paul Taylor, who has been involved in several large deals over the past three decades, “acted dishonestly and with a lack of integrity” during both sets of negotiations, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Friday, fining him £489,000.  Taylor, a former bricklayer turned financier who has previously been linked to the Qatar royal family, made “false and misleading statements” while he was chief executive of the London-based firm Blue Horizon Asset Management, according to the FCA. He has also been barred from working in financial services. In December 2023, during negotiations over the £37mn purchase of a UK bank, Taylor supported his position with documents claiming he was the ultimate beneficial owner of a €200mn bond portfolio, the FCA said. The claims triggered an exclusivity ...

Reading FC have been served with a winding up order by a former owner:  https://rdg.today/its-an-extreme-step-football-finance-expert-analyses-nigel-howes-winding-up-petition-against-reading-fc/ However, football finance guru Kieran Maguire  has said that fans should not worry too much, although these matters can be tiresome and drag on for months.  It looks like a clash of egos.

Reading's new owner believes that only three or four clubs in League One will have a bigger budget in the coming season, although fans are concerned about a slow start to new signings:  https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/sport/25223833.reading-fc-chief-financial-muscle-ahead-crucial-summer/

Reading fans are over the moon after the takeover of their club was completed:  https://thetilehurstend.sbnation.com/2025/5/15/24430246/after-500-days-of-torture-reading-fc-fans-can-breathe-again-royals The English Football League, who are responsible for a lot of the delays, issued a brief statement:  https://www.efl.com/news/2025/may/14/reading-football-club-under-new-ownership/

The Reading owner Dai Yongge was told at the time of his takeover that he would not be allowed to own the club in the Premier League, it can be revealed, although apparently Reading fans have known this for years. Questions have emerged over how Yongge was allowed to buy the club for £24.5million in 2017 after he was blocked from buying Hull City, who were then in the Premier League. The Chinese businessman was disqualified by the EFL in February and has been given until May 5 to sell League One side Reading, who are in serious financial difficulty. A consortium led by Yongge first tried to buy Hull, but was rejected by the Premier League and he formed a different group, which was allowed by the EFL to take over Reading in May 2017, when they were in the Championship. It is understood that the Premier League advised the EFL against the move on the basis that Yongge had not shown good faith in his application to buy Hull. But the EFL’s legal advice was that it would ...

The sad saga at Reading continues with the EFL understandably giving another extension to the deadline for the club to be sold rather than expelling from the league.  However, if Reading make the play offs, the EFL is going to face a difficult decision:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn8vdjd2ld5o

A murky winter's day at Reading's old Elm Park ground.   The club's future is darker now. The EFL’s disqualification of Reading’s deeply unpopular owner, Dai Yongge, has triggered a deadline: he must sell the club by April 5 or risk leaving their fate in the hands of the league. If he fails to show sufficient progress toward a sale, the EFL could declare Reading unable to fulfil their fixtures — expelling them from the league and plunging League One into chaos. A deal is believed to be on the table, with the American investor Robert Platek in an exclusivity period. Platek is also the present owner of the Portuguese side Casa Pia. But Reading fans have been here before — Platek is the fifth prospective buyer to enter exclusivity since Yongge put the club up for sale more than 500 days ago. Speaking before Saturday’s match, the football finance guru Kieran Maguire outlined the stark reality. Yongge was disqualified after failing to pay debts in China, making him an “unr...

Reading fans fear for the future of their club.  Unpopular owner Dai Yongge was actually disqualified in February, but the disqualification was only disclosed in court today as the EFL did not wish to discourage slow moving sale proceedings.  The owner has until April 5th to divest himself of the club or it may be thrown out of the EFL:  https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/21/reading-dai-yongge-thrown-out-efl-sell-club

There may also be some good news finally at Reading where Roger Smee, who played for the club in the 1960s and was later chairman, has submitted a rescue bid. Contrary to some reports, Smee’s bid does not depend on Reading entering administration first and has significant local backing. But the 76-year-old Englishman will have to come to an accommodation with ex-Wycombe Wanderers owner Rob Couhig, who thought he was buying Reading back in the summer only for the deal to collapse under circumstances that have never been explained to him. Couhig, a lawyer based in the U.S. state of Louisiana, would still like to do that deal, by the way, which means Reading’s Chinese owner Dai Yongge does have two credible offers on the table. Time to pick one.

Chinese businessman Dai Yongge bought Reading in May 2017, the same month they narrowly failed to achieve a return to the Premier League via the play-offs. Since then, however, the club have been hit with points deductions for missing payments, sold most of their best players, downgraded their women’s team, lost staff and been relegated to League One.  Rob Couhig has advised clients in thousands of legal disputes, argued cases in hundreds of courtrooms, bought and sold businesses, run a successful baseball team and taken former non-Leaguers Wycombe Wanderers to the second-tier Championship but he has never experienced anything like his attempt to buy Reading. After months of difficult negotiations, the 75-year-old American’s takeover of the club in League One, the third division of English football, collapsed at the final hurdle in September, without any explanation from Reading or their Chinese owner Dai Yongge. Since then, Couhig has ...

Reading’s holding company, Renhe Sports Management Co Ltd, was served this week with a winding-up petition by Walker Morris, the law firm the club used for several years until its top sports lawyer, David Hinchliffe, left last month to join a new firm, Wiggins, taking the Reading account with him. With Hinchliffe no longer on the payroll, Walker Morris took the not-unreasonable decision that it might be time to call in Reading’s sizeable debt to the firm. Reading — who have now been hit by four winding-up petitions since 2020 — declined to comment. For those new to the boxset that is Reading’s takeover, Chinese businessman Dai Yongge bought the club in May 2017, shortly after that play-off final defeat. His reign in Royal Berkshire has been disastrous — for him and the club — with Reading’s fans in open revolt for over a year. Dai has been trying to sell the club ever since they were relegated to League One in 2023 but received no concrete offer from a credible buyer unt...

Former Wycombe owner Rob Couhig is poised to take over at Wycombe ending the chaos at the club under Dai Yongge:  https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/jul/09/reading-takeover-former-wycombe-owner-rob-couhig-dai-yongge?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

There may be light at the end of the tunnel for fans of Reading FC, one of the oldest clubs in football. Last week we brought you the sorry tale of the Chinese-owned team, where unpaid bills and mounting debts have left it in full-blown crisis. Its troubles are symptomatic of the broader financial woes facing English football, and help explain why the British government is seeking to regulate the game. This week there was a breakthrough when Reading owner Dai Yongge said he had entered exclusive talks with a potential buyer, who Bloomberg later identified as Chiron Sports Group. The Switzerland-based firm is backed by money from Christian Angermayer, a German entrepreneur with interests varying from AI and cryptocurrencies to biotech and psychedelics. Sell Before We Dai, the fan campaign group that has long been pressing for a sale, described the start of the formal talks as “a good day”. Let’s see what happens.

The recent travails of Reading FC, founded in 1871, have been held up as a case study as to why regulation of football is needed, after an ambitious owner overspent and underdelivered, leaving the club with unpaid bills, points deductions, relegation and the threat of collapse. “Football is currently organised as a casino and it attracts gamblers,” Greg Double told the Financial Times speaking as, part of the campaign group Sell Before We Dai, which has been urging a sale of the club. “We got a bad one.” Perhaps unintentionally, his reference to a casino echoes Susan Strange’s famous book Casino Capitalism which was one of the founding documents of the study of international political economy, suggesting from a non-Marxist perspective that risky speculation was endemic in capitalist economies. Reading was acquired in May 2017 by Dai, who made his fortune in China turning air-raid shelters into shopping centres, and his sister Xiu Li Hawken. The paperwork was signed just days before...

Reading owner Dai Yongge has agreed to sell the club’s Bearwood Park training ground to local rivals Wycombe Wanderers, less than five years after the state-of-the-art facility was opened. The former Premier League side were in the Championship then and only two years into the Chinese businessman’s tenure as owner. The 2019 move to the £50million site, set in 120 acres of picturesque woodlands only five miles from the club’s stadium, was meant to signal Reading’s ambition to return to the top flight. Having already sold their stadium to a company controlled by Dai in 2019, Reading now face the prospect of renting their own training ground, too, with their landlords being near-neighbours Wycombe. This will come as a bitter blow to the club’s fans, as the only sale they want is Dai handing over the club, with all its assets, as soon as possible. However, that prospect looks as remote as Reading’s chances of returning to the Premier League, as a group led by former...

Reading have been deducted another two points and their owner Mr Dai faces a six figure fine:  https://www.efl.com/news/2024/february/27/efl-statement-reading-fc-and-mr-dai-yongge/ Nevertheless, there are limits to what the EFL can do on behalf of fans which is why a regulator with powers to deal with rogue owners is needed.

Two other clubs have gone bust in recent years under the stewardship of Reading owner Dai Yongge and his associates. KSV Roeselare, members of the Belgian top flight as recently as 2010, and Beijing Renhe, a Chinese Super League club who competed in the Asian Champions League, both fell into financial trouble on his watch. Both no longer exist.  Dai’s takeover, which arrived during a fleeting drive by China to invest in European football, came a fortnight before Reading lost on penalties against Huddersfield Town in the 2017 Championship play-off final. Since then, the Chinese businessman, whose family fortune was amassed through the construction of shopping centres, has run up a wage bill of historic proportions. In April, after failing to comply with a business plan imposed for breaching EFL spending rules, a six-point deduction ultimately doomed Reading to relegation to the third tier. In total, Reading have been docked 16 points under the elusive Dai — hence the 16th-minu...

Already deducted four points by the EFL this season for the late payment of wages and a failure to meet the subsequent obligations, Reading’s abundant off-field problems show no sign of abating. Staff, HMRC and suppliers have all been made to wait for money owed this season, while the hopes of a long-awaited takeover that would end Dai’s disastrous six-year reign have faded. All the while, as Ruben Selles and his players attempt to keep Reading afloat, budgets and staffing numbers continue to be cut through measures orchestrated by Dai and chief executive Dayong Pang. The January transfer window will likely see their greatest assets sold, such as England Under-20s defender Nelson Abbey and club captain Tom Holmes. Others, including Tyler Bindon and Charlie Savage, will be allowed to leave if valuations are met with upfront payments. The extent of Reading’s financial problems have been detailed to  The Athletic  and include: The November payroll for players bei...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire reckons that Reading FC are an attractive proposition at the right price which he puts at £20m to £25m.  He notes that they are not quite a London club, but the nearest thing you will get to one:  https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/sport/23833788.football-finance-expert-predicts-reading-fc-valuation/

Reading's old Elm Park ground could be gloomy in midwinter, but maybe fans were happier Of all its 72 clubs, Reading have gradually become the EFL’s greatest and most pressing concern. There are uncomfortable parallels with the still raw demise of their fellow third-tier side Derby County, another club who overspent in pursuit of a return to the Premier League and lived to regret their complete reliance on an owner who first would lose millions and then all interest. Dai Yongge, a Chinese businessman has owned Reading since May 2017.   Dai arrived with ambitions to lead Reading back to the Premier League, a level they fell from in 2012-13, but has instead left them hamstrung in the third tier following relegation in May, bound by financial constraints brought on by his folly. Reading’s total losses now stand at £191million ($232m) after five consecutive years where wages have eclipsed income. The club’s women’s team has been sacrificed, being downgraded to a p...