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FT’s editor Roula Khalaf chose her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Last year, European football clubs took over in half as high valuations of broadcast rights, legal disputes and slowing markets hit investor interest.
According to the governing body European Development Province (UEFA), European Union figures were published this week in its Football Finance Report, with only 23 clubs in Europe changing hands in 2024. That figure is a sharp drop from 44 sales in 2023, while 48 in 2022 include record deals from Chelsea Football Club, AC Milan and Olympique Lyonnais.
After Chelsea sold £2.5 billion, several elite clubs have explored sales including Manchester United and Liverpool Football Club. But in both cases, the club’s U.S. owners ended up selling minority stakes.
Several other British clubs, including Tottenham, Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham, have been looking for new investors, but no one has reached a deal.
After decades of uninterrupted growth in broadcast rights value, football clubs have been adapting to the obvious cooling in the market, and pay TV operators are less willing to compete.
The top leagues in France and Italy reached their latest broadcast deals with lower interest rates, while the Premier League grew 4% but the number of televised matches offered increased by 40%.
Media executives warned that piracy makes it difficult to justify the high cost of live football broadcast rights. On FT’s football summit business this week, Sky said it costs hundreds of millions of dollars in the industry every year.
There is a series of legal cases that have also created an unpredictable environment on issues of transferring players to sponsorship and the launch of new competitions, which has weakened investors’ demand, said sports bankers and football executives.
The arduousness of European spending rules aimed at curbing rising costs, new owners also have difficulty making an immediate impact due to their more limited investment capabilities. Most clubs in European football continue to lose money.
British chemical billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has made several rounds of cost cuts since he became a shareholder of Manchester United last year. The club said this is partly to free up funds to increase investment in the team.
UEFA said this is developing, “the popularity of a few investments continues to increase as investors seek to gain a foothold in the club”. It said more than one-third of the 96 clubs in Europe’s top five leagues “has a connection to private capital investors” in the form of private equity, venture capital or professional debt funds.
Despite the decline in acquisitions, some existing investors are still looking for deals.
Stephen Pagliuca, head of private equity in the United States and majority owner of the Italian side, told the Football Summit that he is considering increasing football investment. “We are looking for other clubs because I think there is some synergy,” he said, adding that ownership of multiple clubs is good for football.
