Investment in football teams is changing. Ownership was once reserved as ‘passion’ or even ‘vanity’ projects for rich local individuals, but the 21st century has seen the rapid transformation of football ownership into a multi-billion-dollar industry where high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and private equity (PE) firms are fighting for control and profit across sporting and geographical borders. Forbes valued the world’s top 50 sports teams at $353 billion in 2025, over double the 2021 total.[1] Whilst this list has a distinctly American slant (thanks largely to the different model of sport in the US compared to Europe), four of the six European teams in the list were football teams.
Football investment is increasingly coming from two distinct groups: HNWIs and PE firms. HNWIs are ultra-wealthy individuals and family offices who aim to use their vast personal wealth to diversify their investment portfolios, whether for the love of the game, a pursuit of profit, or both. PE firms are investment management companies that acquire controlling or minority stakes in businesses using pooled capital from institutional investors. Their primary goal, in sports as much as in other industries, is to increase commercial value and generate a predictable return on their investment over a structured timeline. The approaches of HNWIs and PE firms therefore differ in some ways: PE firms are more solely led by profit whereas HNWIs can have myriad motives in making their sports investments.
Regardless of motive, these have become the leading approaches to making sports investments. This article discusses why and how these two groups are leading sports investment, how the law is being used to regulate these acquisitions, and what the future might hold for HNWIs, PE firms, and the areas they choose to invest in.
Case study of ownership change: Reading FC
As a long-suffering Reading fan, I felt it was only right to start my analysis of sports investment with the changes in ownership at Reading over the past 35 years, which nicely map on to the shifting profiles of HNWI and PE investment that this article focuses on.
From 1990-2012, the club was owned by Sir John Madejski, a classic example of the traditional local HNWI investing in a club as a passion project. Madejski built the stadium, poured his personal wealth into his local community, and was ultimately rewarded with the club reaching the Premier League on two separate occasions. However, as the financial demands of a rapidly changing football industry skyrocketed, the club needed funds Madejski didn’t have and he looked to sell.
A 51% stake in Reading was subsequently sold in 2012 to Anton Zingarevich, a Russian HNWI who promised substantial investment but ultimately failed to deliver, leaving the club in a precarious financial state and Zingarevich selling his stake for just £1, with the club in £38 million worth of debt. The next takeover was from a Thai consortium of HNWIs offering similar promises to Zingarevich, with equal failures in delivery.
The third takeover in the space of six years occurred in 2017 when the club was sold to Dai Yongge, a multi-billionaire Chinese HNWI. Dai threw unsustainable sums of money at the club chasing a return to the Premier League, but ultimately fell foul of financial sustainability rules, greatly damaging the club in the long term as results began to fade and multiple points deductions contributed to relegation to League One. The Dai Yongge era marked the culmination of the shift in Reading’s ownership from the historical pattern of local HNWIs to international ultra HNWIs who see sports investment as an opportunity for both profit and prestige, not just passion.
After nearly four years of points deductions, transfer embargoes, unpaid wages, and fan protests, Dai Yongge finally sold the club in 2025 to American businessman Rob Couhig. Couhig’s approach has represented a shift away from sole HNWI ownership towards a hybrid HNWI-PE approach. Couhig quickly announced that he was seeking further external investment, and PE firm Aliya Capital Partners acquired a minority stake in the club with its CEO made a director at the club just one month after Couhig’s takeover.[2]
Why football makes sense for HNWIs
In a broader sense, HNWI investment in football clubs is nothing new. As highlighted in the opening paragraph of this article and in the example of Madejski at Reading, investment in sport teams since the professionalisation of sport has largely been in the purview of wealthy individuals, often choosing to put their cash into a local team, focusing more on the enjoyment they get out of ownership rather than expecting significant profits on their investment. However, the past decade has seen a distinct shift in which HNWIs are investing in football, where they are choosing to invest, and why.
Football is increasingly becoming a game for the mega-rich. Only two Premier League club majority owners are estimated to have a net worth below £1 billion, meaning that the traditional model of locally rich individuals buying and supporting clubs is becoming unsustainable. At Championship level, just three clubs recorded a profit in 2024-25, and teams in the division saw a collective loss of £4.3 billion in the 19-year period from 2006-25.[3]
The need to both utilise vast capital and accept possibly huge losses has inherently limited the kind of HNWIs who can invest in football. Today, the HNWIs choosing to invest in football come from anywhere across the globe, but are united by their immense wealth and ‘patient capital’ that can withstand fluctuations. They plan for the long-term and have a high tolerance for illiquidity, which naturally aligns with ownership of football clubs that cannot be quickly or easily divested and may see significant losses or drops in value.
Furthermore, HNWI investment in football clubs is also done to garner prestige and notability, particularly for individuals who have not made their money in the sports sector.A prime example is Alexis Ohanian, the tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Reddit. Ohanian has used his HNWI status to aggressively invest in women’s sports, acting as the lead founding investor of Angel City FC (which became the world’s most expensive women’s sports team when sold for $250 million in July 2024),[4] and more recently buying an 8-10% stake in Chelsea Women.[5] By driving capital into high-growth, historically underfunded areas, HNWIs like Ohanian are able to find both profit and personal benefits from their football investment choices.
Why PE is turning to football
Sport, and particularly football, has not historically been considered a safe or profitable means of investment for PE firms that generally look for stability, predictable revenue streams, and near-guaranteed capital appreciation.
Revenues traditionally fluctuate heavily with on-pitch performance, and this combined with rapid player wage inflation has historically made return on investment incredibly volatile. Nonetheless, the US Sport Model (USSM) is able to override some of these issues in Major League Soccer, which has become a natural fit for PE investment. With its closed franchise league, absence of relegation jeopardy, and highly regulated salary caps, the MLS provides the absolute financial certainty that institutional investors crave, despite strict rules governing the level of PE investments allowed in each franchise.
However, we are also seeing increasing PE investment in Europe. In an increasingly fragmented digital media landscape, high-level live football is one of the last remaining forms of content that commands a mass global audience. The broadcasting revenues are staggering: Premier League international TV rights alone reportedly exceed £2 billion annually, greater than the value of domestic rights.[6] The viewing numbers match the value: an estimated 1.45 billion people watched live Premier League in the 2024-25 season.[7] Today, more than a third of clubs in Europe’s top five leagues possess backing from PE, venture capital, or private debt, with PE firms noting the value of European football’s global appeal in particular. Whilst domestic viewing figures decreased by 10% (Sky Sports) and 17% (TNT) from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 seasons,[8] international viewing figures are still growing, and this is a commercial market that PE firms see immense value to be captured in.
Moreover, to mitigate the inherent risks of the European Sport Model (particularly the financial catastrophe of relegation) PE firms are increasingly hedging their football investments by adopting multi-club ownership models. By buying clubs across various leagues and jurisdictions, they diversify their relegation risk while leveraging shared scouting and commercial infrastructures, resulting in a more profitable network of clubs.
What are the implications for sports lawyers?
As HNWI and PE investment in football increases, the role of sports lawyers in assisting in these deals is becoming increasingly specialised. This blog is fundamentally about the grey areas of sport and law, and there are plenty of those in football investment.
Acquiring a football club is no longer a standard corporate transaction.Historically, English football has relied on self-regulation and a broadly ineffective ‘fit and proper persons’ test when new owners take control of clubs. These systems required leagues to enforce rules against their members, with a whole host of commercial and sporting conflicts of interest. However, the Football Governance Act 2025 has established the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) as a statutory body in the UK. The IFR is now directly responsible for approving the suitability of new club owners and implementing a strict licensing regime designed to safeguard financial sustainability of clubs. While this can protect clubs from asset-stripping and chronic debt, as a by-product the new regime will inevitably extend deal timelines and constrain investor autonomy at first. Both buyers and lawyers will need to get to grips with what appears to be a more rigid and robust system, and only experience will reveal how any grey areas of the new requirements can be dealt with.
Beyond individual takeovers, multi-club investment is increasingly becoming a headache for owners from a regulatory standpoint. Multi-club models make financial sense to investors, but present severe regulatory concerns that must be carefully dealt with. UEFA competition regulations strictly prohibit any entity from exercising “decisive influence” over more than one club participating in the same UEFA tournament. As seen in the legal restructuring required for Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig to compete simultaneously, sports lawyers must carefully design ownership and operational structures to prove there is no undue cooperation in player recruitment or management that threatens competitive integrity. Missteps by US businessman John Textor who owned 43% of Crystal Palace and 77% of Lyon led to Palace being demoted from the Europa League to the Conference League due to contravention of these decisive influence rules.[9] The Palace debacle shows the increasing role of sports lawyers in parsing complex off-field regulations that could fundamentally affect action on it (although ironically, the change may have benefited Palace, who subsequently won the Conference League and qualified for next season’s Europa League despite a subpar Premier League season).
Where next?
Going forward, club owners must walk a tightrope between driving commercial growth and obeying strict new regulators like the UK’s IFR. Future club acquisitions will demand bespoke ownership models capable of balancing these sometimes contradictory economic and legal requirements. Therefore, moving forward we will likely see an increase in hybrid consortiums like that proposed at Reading, where PE firms provide complex financial structuring and vast capital pools, whilst HNWIs provide the ‘patient capital’ and public face required to appease local fanbases and domestic regulators.
Ultimately, the era of the local benefactor is over. Football is a serious institutional asset class that investors worldwide see as a genuine vehicle for consistent profit. With this in mind, the legal and commercial side of football is becoming just as competitive as the play on the pitch.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2025/12/18/the-worlds-50-most-valuable-sports-teams-2025/
[2] https://thetilehurstend.sbnation.com/2024/6/13/24176798/explained-potential-new-reading-fc-owner-rob-couhig-royals-wycombe-wanderers-chairboys
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ce35l43w83lo
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/sep/05/nwsls-angel-city-sold-for-record-breaking-250m-to-disney-ceo-bob-iger
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6358671/2025/05/16/chelsea-women-alexis-ohanian-investment-potential/
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/feb/17/premier-league-south-american-caribbean-tv-rights-espn-deal
[7] https://annual-report-24-25.premierleague.com/
[8] https://www.sportspro.com/news/premier-league-2024-2025-uk-tv-viewership-sky-tnt-sports-june-2025/
[9] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ckg5260zzp2o
Gold Medals & Grey Areas 