Football is changing, again. Many fans who have spent years watching their teams, either live in a stadium or on the television, have long had to face the fact that their teams are (more often than not) no longer owned and run locally.
Russian oligarchs, Gulf nations and Chinese billionaires have regularly bought into European football clubs over the last 20 years. But more recently the money has been flowing across the Atlantic as US private equity firms have seen a lucrative opportunity, caused partly by the pandemic.
This is football like we have never seen it before. Transnational investors – driven by financial returns in a sport fast converging with the entertainment and digital sectors – are transforming the game into a big bucks global industry. Television helped make top football clubs rich, but streaming could bring them untold riches.
Covid-19 didn’t cause football’s private equity boom, but it helped by accelerating and amplifying existing or emerging…
