The Political Economy of Football V2

 Afer a troubled history, Valencia are at last making progress on their much needed stadium:  https://footballgroundguide.com/news/nou-mestalla-redevelopment-restart-marks-biggest-project-in-valencia-history-ahead-of-2027-opening.html

Valencia’s owner Peter Lim was not at their Mestalla ground as his team played a Copa del Rey quarter-final against Barcelona on February 7. They lost that match, 5-0.  Nor was he present for the 7-1 away defeat to the same opponents in La Liga a couple of weeks earlier.  His absence was no surprise. The Singaporean billionaire has not watched Valencia play in person since December 2019, when he attended a 1-1 home draw against Real Madrid. In the intervening 1,500 days or so, there has been an ever-deepening divide between La Liga’s most infamous foreign owner and many of those around a club currently involved in a desperate fight against a potentially calamitous relegation to Spain’s second tier. Once he had made his fortune, Lim looked for opportunities to get into European top-level football.   Before buying Valencia, he was linked with takeovers at Atletico Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna in Spain, England’s Middlesbrough, Rangers in Scotland and Italy’s Milan. ...

Valencia club president Lay Hoon Chan says the club is not up for sale but that owner Peter Lim would study any offers received. Lim, 71, is one of Singapore’s richest men and took over at Valencia in 2014. He has become deeply unpopular with a large majority of the club’s supporters and his ownership has been the subject of protests from Valencia’s fan base in recent years. Supporters had hoped Lim would restore the club, which thrived domestically and in Europe during the 2000s, to prominence after taking over in 2014. Yet Valencia’s ownership have continued to cut costs in recent seasons with diminishing returns on the pitch and their planned Nou Mestalla stadium has yet to be finished. On Thursday, Lay Hoon added that work at the new stadium would resume on January 10 — believed to be a necessary step towards any future takeover of the club. Valencia have not finished higher than ninth in any of the five seasons since and are 20th in La Liga with just two wins from th...

The inspiring Swiss Ramble has been working this weekend on the achievements of Villareal  which reveal a record of good financial management that other clubs could learn from.  Their European achievement To place their achievement in reaching Champions League semi-finals into perspective, their €124m revenue is far below €164m required to be in the top 30 of the Deloitte Money League. Bayern Munich, who they beat in the quarter-finals, have five times as much with €611m. Europe is important to the club strategy, as seen in 2020/21, when the Swiss Ramble estimates they earned €32m for winning the Europa League. Still a lot less than the Spanish representatives in the Champions League received, e.g. Real Madrid got more than three times as much with €111m. They will earn big money from this season’s Champions League. The Swiss Ramble’s model suggests around €78m, though is restricted for two reasons: (a) nothing from first half of TV pool, as qualified via Europa League...

Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim owns Valencia CF, one of Spain’s biggest football clubs. Fans complain he uses their team for personal enrichment, such as speculating on players by trading in Europe’s multibillion-euro transfer market.  “I can do 101 things to make money, and money that I believe I can better control,” said Lim, in an interview with the Financial Times this week. “This is something quite nice. I wake up, I own a football club and I see what happens next. It’s nothing more.” For Lim, Valencia is a “trophy asset”, one that allows him to socialise with the sport’s rich and famous. He has no desire to sell, but believes the club is worth substantially more than the €100m he spent to acquire a majority stake in 2014. Instead, Lim has engaged in a fire sale of players, arguing runaway spending on footballers is no longer sustainable.  This approach to club ownership reveals a growing disconnect between some wealthy overseas investors drawn to...

Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani is considering a takeover at struggling La Liga club Valencia with the San Francisco 49ers.  He thinks that they are in a similar condition to that of Leeds before he took over there, i.e, a fallen giant:  https://www.football-espana.net/2020/12/28/leeds-united-owner-tipped-for-valencia-takeover-bid Where he would get the funds from is one question, but apparently he has backing from American investors in the form of San Franncisco 49ers.   They are about to increase their stake in Leeds. Radrizzani has been keen to expand his football portfolio for some time with Premier League promotion for Leeds enabling him to look into buying another club.   He previously showed interest in struggling Serie A club Genoa.

Leeds United owner Andrea Radrizzani is considering a bid for Valencia.  The club's Singapore owner, Peter Lim, knows Radrizzani well and is under pressure to sell from the club's fans who have protested about his stewardship. Radizzani is considering building up a group of clubs that would have synergies with Leeds.  However, unlike Manchester City his focus would be on Europe and in particular France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The San Francisco 49ers NFL franchise, which has a 13 per cent stake in Leeds, has said that it is keen to invest more in the club.

An interesting analysis of how Valencia lost their place as the third force in Spanish football: Importance of Champions League money The article argues, 'It would be fair to say that up to the collapse of 10 years ago, they had been run into the ground by successive owners. Unlike Real Madrid and Barcelona,both embarking on stadium rebuilds of their own, the club have been denied by Spanish law the right to constitute themselves as member-owned. It left the club, considered to have the third-largest supporter base in Spain, at the mercy of bad owners. 'Now under the stewardship of the Singapore billionaire Peter Lim, who has an interest in Salford City - currently competing for promotion to the Football League - they have some stability. Their year-to-year finance plan relies upon the fragile premise of Champions League qualification which the club has achieved five times since Emery arrived there in 2008, including last season.'

How big the gap is on the pitch between Valencia and Manchester United remains to be seen, but the financial gap is huge. Valencia's position is precarious, particularly when it has to compete the fourth Spanish Champions League place. Barcelona, Athletico Madrid and Real Madrid usually get the other three. Valencia have returned to the Champions League for the first time in three seasons. It wasn't always that way, of course. In 2000 and 2001 the club reached the Champions League final and in 2004 it won the Uefa Cup. But the financial stakes in football have changed and the gap between the clubs with a global profile and those in the second tier has widened. One time heavyweights like AC Milan and Olympique de Marseille have fallen behind the pack. Valencia were bankrupt before a Singaporean billionaire, Peter Lim, rescued them in 2014. Lim has invested €200m of his own fortune in the club as he tries to turn a large fortune into a small one. But, as is so often the...