For the fun? For the Prestige? For the money? It certainly provides owners with immense Kudos to add a Premier League Football Club to their Portfolios. With premier league clubs being bought up by American Billionaires and mysterious Foreign investors one most wonder why they are doing this, especially when the buyers seem to have very little emotional attachment to the clubs.No matter how many times Malcolm Glazer (Manchester United), George Gillett and Tom Hicks (Liverpool) and Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) say they love their Football Clubs a cynical observer can only conclude they see these clubs as good investments and will make some money along the way, or at least avoid losing money on the deals, while indulging themselves in the luxury of owning well supported teams in arguably the most passionate sport and football league in the world.
After all if you own racehorses, sports cars, private jets and villas around the world a Football Club is another great plaything.
American Billionaires have shown a healthy interest in purchasing English Premier League Football clubs and an interesting article from Conde Naste Portfolio, probes these buys. Apart from the obvious sheer "hell of it" factor the article points to the fact that these ultra rich men have run out of sports franchises to purchase in the US, and when a Sports team does come up for sale, bidding is frenzied.
So why not turn their attention to European shores where clubs are available and actively searching for new owners to provide the investment needed to keep up with Manchester United and Chelsea. The Conde Naste article continues by quoting Liverpools website has 28,000,000 registered members worldwide. And here I feel is the crux of the matter.
Website Revenue Guestimate
With online advertising growing at a phenomenal rate, (check Googles share price to see what the stock market thinks of online advertising) clubs such as Liverpool have a potential goldmine in advertising revenue on their doorstep. 28 million registered members equates to a lot of people every day viewing the Liverpool site.
If Liverpool can attract 20% of their members to view the website every day, a carefully thought out Website Pay per click Advertising campaign could bring in online revenue of between £80,000-£100,000 EVERY DAY. This is a mind boggling figure and certainly enough to cover the £178,000,000 loan borrowed from Royal Bank of Scotland to purchase Liverpool FC. Add to this the share of the Premiership Worldwide Broadcast rights, other advertising revenues, stadium rights and Gate receipts you can suddenly see the value Foreign Investors now see in English Football Clubs.
These worldwide membership numbers are only set to increase as the clubs fight to gain footholds in the lucrative Chinese and other Asian markets. Hence the influx of Chinese players into the Premier League.
So for the Globally thinking modern Premier League owner, the sky is the limit, this of course assumes that you can create success on the field, which is the eternal footballing battle.
Have you ever wanted to own a Football player or Sports Star? Another interesting article about the incredible prospect of owning shares in an Athlete and then trading them for real money.
Next : Top 7 reasons to Own a Football Club, Top 7 reasons NOT to own a Football Club.
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