Most football clubs lose money, pay almost no dividends and answer to supporters who would rather their owner did not exist. And yet some of the most disciplined investors in the world — funds whose entire job is to earn a return — are queuing to buy them. The paradox dissolves once you stop looking at the annual accounts and start looking at the exit.
In 2021, Barcelona could not afford to keep Lionel Messi. Five years later it has won two league titles, crossed a billion euros in revenue for the first time and moved back into a rebuilt Camp Nou. The recovery is real. It was also paid for, in part, with income the club will not see for the next quarter of a century.
19 September · 12 min
Owning several clubs at once has become the default strategy of institutional money in football, for the same reason groups form in any industry: one scouting network, one data team and one player pipeline cost far less when spread across five balance sheets instead of one. The commercial logic takes about a minute to explain. The regulation takes rather longer — and it now turns on one calendar date that falls months before anybody knows who has qualified for what.
19 September · 11 min
Every conversation about smart football ownership arrives at Brighton within about ninety seconds. Two record-breaking profits, players bought for nothing and sold for fortunes, a betting man's edge applied to recruitment, and the accounts confirm all of it.
17 September · 9 min
You assumed the shirts sold every summer were a major source of income for a football club? They are not, and it is not close. The single biggest line on most clubs' accounts is television — which makes it awkward that this is precisely the line now collapsing across several of Europe's biggest leagues.
15 September · 12 min
A club never owns a footballer. What it buys is the early end of an employment contract — and that one distinction explains most of the rest: the fees, the loans, the clauses, and the way a €100m signing actually lands in the accounts.
13 September · 8 minOne analysis, three numbers worth keeping, one file to watch. Nothing else.