European clubs are increasingly turning to American private-equity funds, which believe there is money to be made
clubs’ revenues have been battered in recent years. For those lucky teams with generous owners that would once not have mattered much. But the days of sugar daddies bailing out clubs seem numbered. One of the originators of this owner-as-benefactor model was Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch who owns Chelsea, an English club. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Mr Abramovich put Chelsea up for sale, lest it be seized as part of sanctions placed on him by the British government.
A host of clubs, from Portsmouth to Barcelona, have spent beyond their means over the past two decades. Chelsea’s model was soon copied. Manchester City was bought by Sheikh Mansour, a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family in 2008; Paris St Germain was snapped up by a branch of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, controlled by its royal family, in 2011. Both set about pouring money into their clubs.
This squeeze comes amid greater scrutiny of who owns and funds football clubs. When another English club, Newcastle United, was bought by Saudi Arabia’s public-investment fund in 2021, fans of football and human-rights advocates both protested. Now that Mr Abramovich has been forced to give up Chelsea, clubs have good reason to become more cautious about backers linked to dodgy regimes. By the same token, for potential owners, clubs are no longer safe places to store their wealth.
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