American investors control more than half the Premier League. They paid billions of dollars for the privilege of owning teams that lose money every year while drunk Englishmen throw beer at each other in stadiums built during the Thatcher administration.
CNBC calls these "attractive long-term assets." So are beachfront properties in Arizona if you wait long enough for the climate apocalypse. The difference is the Arizona real estate won't demand you spend $200 million on a Brazilian teenager who pulls his hamstring getting out of a Lamborghini.
The math works like this: Buy a soccer club for $3 billion. Watch it hemorrhage cash for a decade. Sell it for $5 billion to a different American billionaire who read the same CNBC article. Everyone pretends this makes sense because the line went up.
English fans are thrilled. Nothing says "working class sport" like having your club owned by a guy who made his fortune foreclosing on hospitals in Florida. The Glazers bought Manchester United and financed the purchase by putting debt on the club itself. It's like taking out a mortgage on your neighbor's house and making them pay for it. Brilliant stuff.
But here's what the super rich figured out: You can't buy the Lakers twice. You can't buy the Yankees three times. Those assets are locked up by families who understand that owning a sports team is just a socially acceptable way to play with action figures as an adult.
The Premier League had twenty teams. Most of them were owned by British people who thought soccer clubs were supposed to break even. American investors saw that and laughed in private equity.
Now we've got Todd Boehly spending $1 billion on Chelsea players like he's trying to set his Bloomberg terminal on fire. The club finished twelfth. The trophy cabinet gathered dust. But the valuation went up, so technically he's a genius.
The appeal isn't the sport. It's that European trophy wives are impressed by different toys than American ones.
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