The Money Behind European Football’s Institutional Moment

Owning a football club has traditionally been, more than anything, a labor of love. Elton John bankrolled Watford and made himself chairman; pop star Robbie Williams sank a small fortune into Port Vale, the club he’d followed since boyhood, losing most of it when it fell into administration. British cook Delia Smith and her husband ran Norwich City for the best part of 30 years. When Smith finally let go in 2024, it was to Mark Attanasio, an American who is also the principal owner of baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers. The handover — from a British national treasure to a seasoned US sports investor — captures how the game has changed: The passion hasn’t cooled, but now, professional capital sits alongside it.

Roughly half of the English Premier League’s 20 clubs are now majority American-owned, and close to two-thirds carry at least some US money. Investors who have helped professionalize American sports have found that European football offers a global audience at a discount to comparable US franchises — and, for now, these clubs remain more obtainable.

Scarcity is one driver of this investment trend: Only a handful of clubs are truly global brands and no more are being created while the pool of buyers keeps growing, lifting what the best names are worth. That premium was apparent in the sale of a stake in Liverpool FC in August 2026. The deal reportedly valued the club at around £5.5 billion — roughly eight times its annual revenue, well above the 4.9 times average for the top 30 European soccer clubs. Even so, it trailed the 9.4 times valuation commanded by the 30 Major League Soccer clubs in the US and Canada, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

The valuation gap largely comes down to structure. American leagues have no relegation system (teams can’t be demoted for poor performance), the number of franchises is fixed and salary caps hold costs in check. “It’s the benefit of the franchise model, which is overall more investor-friendly,” says Gian Piero Sammartano, Global Co-Head of Sports Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan.

But Sammartano argues that the risk/reward equation looks different over the medium to long term. “Football is the world’s most popular sport and a growing ecosystem. You’re investing in equity value growth,” he says — a bet that a club’s revenues, brand and surrounding projects will compound, even if it “might take perhaps 10 years for that value to accrue.” Against the double-digit revenue multiples commanded by the biggest US leagues and other successful franchise models such as the Indian Premier League (IPL), Europe’s five-to-eight-times valuations for top clubs seem relatively attractive, he says.

A different kind of capital

That investment case rests on what football is becoming, rather than what it earns. The money flowing into the game today looks very different from the billionaire-owner era just a few years ago. In 2023, J.P. Morgan advised Sir Jim Ratcliffe on his minority stake in Manchester United — increasingly the norm as club values run into the billions.

Private equity has raced to build dedicated sports funds, while family offices increasingly treat football as a line in the portfolio. Sammartano cites a 2025 J.P. Morgan Private Bank survey that found the share of billionaire family offices with sports team exposure increased from 6% to 20% in the span of just three years. 

New routes to exposure

While ownership makes headlines, the money that runs the game increasingly follows the value of live events. Tim Self, Head of Public Finance and Infrastructure Direct Lending at J.P. Morgan, says that, with so much else now consumed on demand, people are “gravitating toward the value of that live content,” and that demand pulls investment toward the venues that host it. “We think of stadiums and arenas really as large infrastructure assets,” he says. With their overall revenues less exposed to results on the pitch, they generate predictable income across the year, from match days to concerts. Self points to Fulham’s redeveloped Riverside Stand, which J.P. Morgan financed, as “a community asset designed to stay open every day of the year.” Increasingly, clubs build stadiums as part of a wider master plan of homes, retail and live music that bring year-round activity to the surrounding area — a sign the sport is maturing into a credible long-term asset.

Outside the Premier League, growth in European media rights is becoming harder to find. In Germany, the Bundesliga’s new domestic TV rights deal, for example, is up only 2% over the previous season’s cycle. Yet clubs are finding other ways to put capital to work.

One is transfer receivables. When a club sells a player for, say, €100m, only a third might be paid up front, the rest arriving in installments over the next few years. Rather than wait, the selling club can turn those future payments into cash now. Taoufik Bounhar, J.P. Morgan’s Global Head of Credit Solutions Trading, buys them at a small discount, structured as a sale rather than a loan. “We purchase an identifiable contractual receivable at a pre-agreed discount rate, providing the selling club with immediate liquidity while assuming the exposure to the buying club,” he explains.

For the selling club, the appeal is immediate liquidity: Cash it can deploy now, on the pitch through new signings and on facilities and running costs, rather than waiting years for the installments to land. What makes those receivables especially attractive to buyers is statutory protections in some leagues. “Football transfer receivables benefit from a distinctive contractual and regulatory framework, including league-specific rules that incentivize timely settlement. These protections can materially strengthen the credit profile,” says Bounhar. The receivables can then be retained or distributed to alternative-credit investors seeking lower correlation to traditional credit markets.

The asset money can’t buy

As institutional money pushes further into the game, there is indeed a limit to how far football can be treated like any other asset. Everything that makes football financeable — scarcity, century-old loyalties, the fervent devotion of supporters — also makes it resistant to being run purely for return. Push commercialization too hard, and you risk damaging what makes the club valuable in the first place. Hull City discovered this when its owners sought to rename the club Hull Tigers, arguing that the new identity would travel better in global markets. Supporters revolted and the FA rejected the change. Sammartano, who advises club owners, says the balance is crucial: “It’s really about how you create sustainable, long-term growth that respects the club’s identity and its relationship with the fans.”

Football’s institutional moment is a paradox: It may not be a conventional asset class, but the market around it is starting to behave like one. The owners who succeed will be those who grasp that loyalty is the asset, and that, once lost, it cannot simply be bought back.