Why Yankee capital likes European football
The owner of Everton soccer club in England’s Premier League has agreed to sell the Liverpool-based team to a Miami-based investment group. If the deal survives league scrutiny, it would mean American ownership of 10 of the 20 clubs in the world’s most lucrative soccer league.
So why has European football recently become a favorite destination for Yankee capital?
Even though Marshall Lamm lives about 5,000 miles away from Liverpool in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is very much a diehard Everton soccer fan.
He watches every game, knows the players and can sing a fight song: “What the heck do we care? Cause we always know it’s gonna be a show cause the Everton boys are there.”
Like his fellow Evertonians across the pond, Lamm is mostly excited for new owners — as long as they’re into it for the same reasons he’s into it.
“I don’t think American investors need to be messing with any sports team unless they really believe in the team, the club, the history and the fans. English football is very different than American sports,” he said.
One key difference between European soccer and say, the NFL, is something called “promotion” — basically teams from the minor leagues can get to the major leagues if they win enough.
To Jordan Gardner, that sounded like an investment opportunity.
“In the promotion system, you can buy the equivalent of a AAA baseball team and get it to the equivalent of the major leagues,” he said. “And what comes with that is huge jumps in revenue, the value of your club, so it can if done properly be financially lucrative.”
Gardner led an investment consortium to buy a Danish football team in 2019, got it promoted and then sold it.
A big chunk of American investors are coming from Silicon Valley, he added. “I think tech looks at sport in general but European soccer as an undervalued asset class in something they can bring in expertise and know how and add value.”
Like any investment, there’s risk too. The three teams at the bottom of the Premier League standings get relegated, or dropped to an inferior league. As of right now, Everton is in the relegation zone.
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