Multiclub ownership thread | Bournemouth and Burnley link up with Scottish clubs

[WeePat]

There was recent controversy, I guess you can call it, when the ownership group that owns Chelsea announced the purchase of Strasbourg.

We all know about City Football Group and the 157 clubs that come under the City FG ownership.

What I didn’t realise was how widespread this actually was. For example, I didn’t know the Villa and Brighton owners also own other clubs in Europe, which I suppose is causing a problem because Brighton and the Belgian club Tony Bloom owns both qualified for the Europa League and Villa and the Portuguese club their owners own have both qualified for the Conference League.

UEFA are now looking into this, and also monitoring AC Milan, whose owners also own Toulouse. Milan are in the CL but could drop into the EL if they finish 3rd in the group and potentially meet Toulouse.

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[NYAS]

Doesn’t Brentford’s owner also own Midtjyland?

 

[Moriarty]

Doesn’t Brentford’s owner also own Midgetland?

Bit small-time that isn't it?

 

[2 man midfield]

Doesn’t Brentford’s owner also own Midgetland?

Is it a conflict of interest if one of those clubs dwarfs the other?

 

[NYAS]

Bit small-time that isn't it?

Edited

 

[Marauder1]

The concentration of ownership and creation of football conglomerates is not really surprising. Now football is a 100% profit driven private enterprise its kind of natural. The same has happened in multiple other industries so no reason to presume it wouldn't happen in football aswell. I probably have more chance of winning the lotto than UEFA doung anything meaningful.

 

[miked99]

Doesn’t Brentford’s owner also own Midtjyland?

One of the best theme parks I've ever been to

 

[Shipperley]

Still trying to work out the dynamic at Palace. Of the ownership group:

John Textor through his Eagle Football group has 40% ownership of Palace and majority stakes in Lyon (France), Botafogo (Brazil) and RWD Moelenbeek (Belgium)

David Blitzer through Global Football Holdings has a ~10% stake in Palace and majority stakes in Real Salt Lake (US), Augsburg (Germany), Estoril (Portugal), ADO Den Haag (Netherlands), Alcaron (Spain), SK Beveren (Belgium) and Brondby (Denmark)

So far I haven’t seen any tangible benefits at all, just a friendly with Botafogo during the World Cup. Also a very strange dynamic having two Belgian clubs within the ‘family’, Textor’s RWDM just beat Blitzer’s SK Beveren to promotion with a couple of Palace youngsters on loan there. That must be rather awkward when they meet up to talk about Palace.

No idea what the end goal is, especially now work permit rules have been relaxed here. Easy access to Lyon’s best players would be nice but they’ll probably say the same about us!

 

[P-Ro]

The concentration of ownership and creation of football conglomerates is not really surprising. Now football is a 100% profit driven private enterprise its kind of natural. The same has happened in multiple other industries so no reason to presume it wouldn't happen in football aswell. I probably have more chance of winning the lotto than UEFA doung anything meaningful.

Football isn't a profit driven enterprise for most of the richest clubs. City, Newcastle and PSG are state run projects whose purpose is to increase the influence of their respective nations. And on the other end of the spectrum you have clubs like Barcelona who seem to be 100% loss driven in order to satisfy the socios.

 

[Marauder1]

Football isn't a profit driven enterprise for most of the richest clubs. City, Newcastle and PSG are state run projects whose purpose is to increase the influence of their respective nations. And on the other end of the spectrum you have clubs like Barcelona who seem to be 100% loss driven in order to satisfy the socios.

That's true, but I am not entirely sure that really changes anything. The value, say, FSG is trying to derive from their sports ventures and the value the Saudi and Qatari investment funds are trying to derive are different, but they are both broadly speaking going to use the same mechanisms of private enterprise to achieve their goals, and neither one of them is particularly interested in football or the clubs they are invested in per se, they are merely vehicles, products, to achieve an end goal. The fact that Barcelona are fan owned doesn't really change alot, they are being forced to compete against private enterprises based on the principles that come with that market, if they can't they'll simply cease to be relevant on the global football stage and probably go bust in the process of trying to compete.

Obviously, the Saudi and Qatari backed teams have a huge advantage here, they just invest in themselves with state funds. It's hard to compete against that, and they are likely speeding up the process of top football clubs becoming just another global brand to extract value from.

Even without them, we will still witness the concentration of ownership across the sport now that football is, for me, a commercially driven endeavor at the professional level. Many of these conglomerates are not just in football, they are general sport entities, and there is plenty of scope to synergise activities across their sport portfolios. Clubs that are not part of these larger groups will struggle to compete at any meaningful level.

My take on football is very cynical I admit. But for me, it is just a matter of time until national leagues are usurped by a super league and a handful of mega clubs backed by global sports conglomerates rule the roost.

This is not an inherantly bad thing but it is a big change. Football clubs are cultural in their roots but these new entities will shed most of those ties in any meaningful way. The reason Cities success is not viewed by rivals in a meaningful way is precisely because it is meaningless, they are just a brand, a product with no real meaning or value. As a venture it will ultimately make a lot of money and have a lot of success, but its just a football version of Disney. Sure, I'll watch Disney movies but I'm not about to hitch up my knickers and fly the flag for them.

 

[Cloud7]

Football isn't a profit driven enterprise for most of the richest clubs. City, Newcastle and PSG are state run projects whose purpose is to increase the influence of their respective nations. And on the other end of the spectrum you have clubs like Barcelona who seem to be 100% loss driven in order to satisfy the socios.

 

[SilentWitness]

I don't think it should be allowed. Understand why owners do it but not for me.

 

[Forest Red]

Marikanis is in the process of buying Monza to add to us and Olympiakos. If it helps us even slightly, compete with the sports washing clubs then it’s fair game. I don’t have to like it but then there’s a lot about modern football that stinks.

 

[do.ob]

This has been going on for years. E.g. the best club in Austria being Leipzig's farm team. They even allowed both of them to play in the CL. It's a joke if they are just now realizing this may be a problem and with so many clubs already gobbled up it won't be any easier to ban this. Not that I'd expect Uefa to have the integrity to do so.

 

[WeePat]

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[USREDEVIL]

I'm for segregation.

 

[VARsenal]

How is it not a conflict of interest when someone owns multiple clubs who compete against each other? If a single owner has multiple clubs in the same European competition they should make them choose one of their clubs to compete and all their other clubs should forfeit the competition.

 

[abundance]

Football isn't a profit driven enterprise for most of the richest clubs. City, Newcastle and PSG are state run projects whose purpose is to increase the influence of their respective nations. And on the other end of the spectrum you have clubs like Barcelona who seem to be 100% loss driven in order to satisfy the socios.

Yeah.
In Italy too... among Serie A regulars, many smaller club are self-sufficient, and some even turn a profit from time to time (Napoli, Lazio, Atalanta, Udinese, Bologna, Empoli...), all with budgets under 200m. Ah by the way Pozzo from Udinese owns Watford too.

While most of the bigs and then some (Juve, Inter, Milan, Roma, Fiorentina, Sassuolo, Sampdoria...) rely on owners/funds financial backing to meet ends. The three striped clubs from the north especially are money pits for the strain to try to stay at the top of the food chain while TV and sponsorships money shrinks.

 

[Chipper]

How is it not a conflict of interest when someone owns multiple clubs who compete against each other? If a single owner has multiple clubs in the same European competition they should make them choose one of their clubs to compete and all their other clubs should forfeit the competition.

I'd go further. One of the clubs gets selected randomly in a champions league/fa cup style draw.

Trying to think of the fans. If someone owned an Italian and Bulgarian team for example, who both regularly qualified for European competition, the owner would likely choose the Italian team to compete every year if it was down to them. It would be more lucrative for them.

The Bulgarian team's fans and players/staff for that matter would be denied European football year after year. Pick one at random and at least they have a chance.

Of course this ruleset would discourage multi team ownership, which is fine as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Marauder1]

How is it not a conflict of interest when someone owns multiple clubs who compete against each other? If a single owner has multiple clubs in the same European competition they should make them choose one of their clubs to compete and all their other clubs should forfeit the competition.

That in itself would create a conflict of interests because now one club is being chosen to the detriment of the other. If both club A and club B have qualified for Europe but club A is chosen to compete then club B would lose out on the opportunity to play in a competition they had fairly qualified for. The same situation arises if you randomly pick a club rather than letting the owner, one club being unfairly punished.

I dont see what option there is but to let both play, even though this will lead to scenarios where clubs owned by the same entity will play eachother. If multiclub ownership is not going to be prevented (its not) then at the very least you should only be allowed to own a single tier one team, by tier one I mean clubs that compete in Europe. Obviously no entity should be allowed to own more than one team in the same league. What happens when a team improves though and get promoted? Owner's forced to sell? That wont happen so this doesn't really work either.

The whole ownership structures make an absolute mess of football, the fact Newcastle can sponsor themselves at the highest market rate possible is hugely unfair but because they could show it was a potential market rate it seen as fair by the PL even though its highly unlikely a normal sponsor would of actually paid that rate this season.

 

[Cloud7]

The club ownership topic is a really difficult one that I have no idea what the solution for is.

For example, there was a story recently that Zaha bought a football club. What happens if the team that Zaha plays for ends up meeting the team he owns in an FA cup fixture?

Or the obvious issue of the Red Bull clubs, or if Jim takes over United and then Nice and United are both in the CL.

What do you do then? Do you say that one entity (INEOS or red bull for example) can only own one football club because of the theoretical possibility of the clubs meeting in the same competition? That in itself is a bit awkward because there will likely be ways around that, like for example Jassim likely being a front for the Qatar state. And even then, you’re limiting clubs in that the overlap of the pool of people with the amount of money to own a football club and the people with interest in owning a football club is probably very small.

It’s a bit of a minefield.

 

[Superden]

That UEFA cop out is mind boggling. What is the point of people / groups owning multiple clubs if there's little activity / benefits between them for the ultimate owners. The chinese walls that seem to be required are ridiculous.

according to Uefa - It added that "no-one has control or decisive influence over more than one club in a Uefa club competition".

So Tony Bloom (brighton owner) has no control / influence over Union in Belgium even though he was/is their majority shareholder. No doubt the ownership has been changed on paper to suit UEFA, but the idea that Mr Bloom no longer has that decisive influence is laughable.

 

[Superden]

Not having more than one club of yours in a tournament was one of the last barriers for any sporting integrity left in football. Now thats gone, the WWE style sportsentertainment model is almost here.

 

[GazTheLegend]

Another disgusting pissing on the grave of competitive football to be honest. The reason clubs and club owners would do it is simple: You can only have a squad of 25 players at (a club in Stockport that claims to be from Manchester, for instance). They have to abide by financial fair play. Their owners buy another 3 clubs in different leagues, one in France, one in America, one in Argentina. Now you have 100 squad spaces + all their youth teams. You want to dodge visa rules on children being bought in South America? Buy them for your SA club then transfer them soon as they turn 18 for a minimal fee. You need an extra 10-20m off the books to sign a WC player for 'club to play for Stockport?' You sell that player to the American club for 0 but write it down as 20m in the books. Do this with all your older players and make sure they're very well paid to go, they'll quite happily swap to America or Dubai or wherever for a few years - zero tax means they're going to live comfortably forevermore on their last payout.

You then pay the journalists behind the scenes, or at the very, very least give them extremely preferential treatment in all things (first class tickets to all their matches, dining, 'gifts') and they are soon writing articles about how "well run" your club is. Certain clubs from Stockport could basically do what amounts to a milquetoast version of human trafficking. Lets be real, a certain club in London has been doing this for a very long time, we laughed at them because it didn't seem to be working but the longer it's gone on for the worse they've gotten. It's unbelievable how much I hate football in 2023.

 

[Melbourne Red]

Another disgusting pissing on the grave of competitive football to be honest. The reason clubs and club owners would do it is simple: You can only have a squad of 25 players at (a club in Stockport that claims to be from Manchester, for instance). They have to abide by financial fair play. Their owners buy another 3 clubs in different leagues, one in France, one in America, one in Argentina. Now you have 100 squad spaces + all their youth teams. You want to dodge visa rules on children being bought in South America? Buy them for your SA club then transfer them soon as they turn 18 for a minimal fee. You need an extra 10-20m off the books to sign a WC player for 'club to play for Stockport?' You sell that player to the American club for 0 but write it down as 20m in the books. Do this with all your older players and make sure they're very well paid to go, they'll quite happily swap to America or Dubai or wherever for a few years - zero tax means they're going to live comfortably forevermore on their last payout.

You then pay the journalists behind the scenes, or at the very, very least give them extremely preferential treatment in all things (first class tickets to all their matches, dining, 'gifts') and they are soon writing articles about how "well run" your club is. Certain clubs from Stockport could basically do what amounts to a milquetoast version of human trafficking. Lets be real, a certain club in London has been doing this for a very long time, we laughed at them because it didn't seem to be working but the longer it's gone on for the worse they've gotten. It's unbelievable how much I hate football in 2023.

Gaz dropping truth bombs left, right and centre.

 

[WeePat]

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[Solius]

Be interesting to see who voted what.

 

[roonster09]

Be interesting to see who voted what.

Assuming it's ManUtd, ManCity, Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth

 

[WeePat]

Be interesting to see who voted what.

It sounds like they were 1 vote away from the ban being implemented.

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[Forest Red]

Assuming it's ManUtd, ManCity, Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth

Hopefully we did. We’ve got two players out at Olympiacos getting minutes and fitness - just like any other loan. It’s a daft proposal.

 

[2 man midfield]

Don’t like this at all. Tobido here we go though I guess.

 

[SilentWitness]

Hopefully we did. We’ve got two players out at Olympiacos getting minutes and fitness - just like any other loan. It’s a daft proposal.

It's not really daft. It depends on what you want the league to be and who you want it to be owned by.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

So Mahrez, Benz and Neves turning up at the Geordies for the new years?

 

[Teja]

So Saudi clubs can sign a player and just immediately loan them back to Newcastle for the duration of the contract?

I'll probably follow NFL at this point, it has more integrity / better regulation than whatever football is becoming.

 

[RedRocket9908]

Assuming it's ManUtd, ManCity, Chelsea, Newcastle, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth

I cant see why Man Utd would have voted against the ban but I think Everton would have as 777 own a few clubs.

 

[Forest Red]

It's not really daft. It depends on what you want the league to be and who you want it to be owned by.

Of all the things wrong with the leagues financial arrangement, this isn’t one of them. Ourselves, Brighton, Bournemouth and palace are mid / bottom half teams. We don’t have the resources to establish ourselves as regular top 4 sides so for what little benefit we gain, it helps bridge that gap. If there is an issue with ownership then tighten the rules around who can own a PL club?

 

[Oranges038]

So Saudi clubs can sign a player and just immediately loan them back to Newcastle for the duration of the contract?

I'll probably follow NFL at this point, it has more integrity / better regulation than whatever football is becoming.

Technically. But, when it comes to Newcastle. It's going to be a tough choice between.

Playing in the hot desert in front of 700 people for half a million a week.

Or

Playing in front of a load of obese topless Geordies in the wet and cold for half a million a week.

 

[Ekkie Thump]

Of all the things wrong with the leagues financial arrangement, this isn’t one of them. Ourselves, Brighton, Bournemouth and palace are mid / bottom half teams. We don’t have the resources to establish ourselves as regular top 4 sides so for what little benefit we gain, it helps bridge that gap...

....and widens the gap for everyone that hasn't got that kind of multinational structure.

 

[SilentWitness]

Of all the things wrong with the leagues financial arrangement, this isn’t one of them. Ourselves, Brighton, Bournemouth and palace are mid / bottom half teams. We don’t have the resources to establish ourselves as regular top 4 sides so for what little benefit we gain, it helps bridge that gap. If there is an issue with ownership then tighten the rules around who can own a PL club?

Just because the league is bad for you/Brighton/Bournemouth/Palace/and potentially us it doesn't mean we should hop on that train and make it worse.

Yes, the rules should be tightened and changed but won't be, because the PL has no care for what's right, they'll just keep on making it worse.

 

[TheRedHearted]

There was recent controversy, I guess you can call it, when the ownership group that owns Chelsea announced the purchase of Strasbourg.

We all know about City Football Group and the 157 clubs that come under the City FG ownership.

What I didn’t realise was how widespread this actually was. For example, I didn’t know the Villa and Brighton owners also own other clubs in Europe, which I suppose is causing a problem because Brighton and the Belgian club Tony Bloom owns both qualified for the Europa League and Villa and the Portuguese club their owners own have both qualified for the Conference League.

UEFA are now looking into this, and also monitoring AC Milan, whose owners also own Toulouse. Milan are in the CL but could drop into the EL if they finish 3rd in the group and potentially meet Toulouse.

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Is city football group connected to Manchester city?