American Money Takes Over: Why US Investors Are Buying European Football Clubs

Why Are Americans Buying European Football Clubs?

All over the world, people are crazy about football, except for two of the largest and most powerful countries where football is actually not that popular. Both countries are trying to change that.

“We have our Super Bowl. We have our World Series. We have the NBA finals. We have March Madness. But, my lord, it is quite nothing like the World Cup.” He is not the first US president to notice this, and it’s not limited to US presidents either. Both China and the US are trying to conquer the most popular sport in the world, each in its own typical style.

While China launched a government-driven football development plan to win the World Cup by 2050, the US is trying to take over the game with money. Americans now own almost half of the Premier League clubs. It is a similar picture in Italy.

After already battling for world dominance in technology, trade, and political systems, it looks like the two superpowers are bringing their fight to the football field. So, we looked into why Americans are buying European football clubs.

Football is war

Welcome to the new cold war for football. To be fair, the term “new cold war” seems a bit exaggerated. After all, we’re just talking about sports. However, in the original cold war, sports did play a huge part. While in the 80s it was the US versus the Soviet Union, the term “new” or “second” cold war is often used to describe the tensions between the US and China. It is also a great way for the media to oversimplify a highly complex matter and sell a good story. And hey, you clicked on this video as well.

But it is not that far-fetched. Russia and their state-owned energy company Gazprom are a telling example of how football can be used for political influence. They poured millions of sponsorship money into football to buy public acceptance for their pipeline projects and make Europe, especially Germany, hooked on Russian gas. The beginning of a war that is not cold at all. Whole books have been written about it. There is even a quote that “Football is war.”

So, should we be worried that the leaders of the two most powerful nations are meeting with the FIFA president? Not really. So far, neither country seems to be a threat on the pitch, at least not their national teams. China can blame communism. Under Mao Zedong, the country was isolated from football’s growing popularity. Even after China started to open up under Deng Xiaoping, the game was difficult to play, as meetings of ten or more people needed official sanction.

The Chinese will tell you that they invented football, and they have a point. But they do not play it in large numbers today, nor do they play it very well. The Chinese government is trying to change this with a football development plan to make the country a worldwide football superpower.

After President Xi announced the plan in 2014, international stars were lured to the domestic league and Chinese investors bought up European clubs to support the Communist Party’s plan to influence global geopolitics through football.

But then the government changed its mind and forced investors to pull out of their foreign investments to focus on the domestic market. More than half of the 20 European clubs owned by Chinese were sold soon after. And who took over from the Chinese? Five years later, US investors are dominating European football.

To understand why, we need to focus a bit more on the US and their weird relationship to soccer. “Well, first of all, we call it football. Very important to call it football. I guess we can call it soccer here. Nobody is gonna yell at us.” (Ryan Reynolds interview joke)

The Weird History of Football in the US

The history of football in the US is long and complex. But to keep this video short and sweet, here it is broken down into 50 seconds using a stock chart, because it’s full of ups and downs.

The first high came in the 1920s with the creation of the American Soccer League, which was at times even able to pay higher wages than the top European sides. However, power games and corruption soon brought this first golden age to an end. What followed was a time where “sports where one’s hands are not used, are commie sports played by Russians, Poles, Germans, and other commies.”

Then Pelé joined the New York Cosmos and everything changed, at least for two years, because soon after, the North American Soccer League folded. When America hosted the World Cup in 1994, it was again thought that football was on the up. But the MLS failed to build on the momentum.

The US reaching the quarter-finals in 2002, David Beckham signing with LA in 2007, and Landon Donovan’s last-minute goal against Algeria in 2010 were all thought to be game-changers. However, none of these events changed the games that Americans showed the most interest in.

So where do we stand today? “I just don’t understand the game. Soccer is a communist sport. I don’t get it.” Some things never change—the same old cold war rhetoric. But there’s also this: a compilation of Americans succeeding at football, like Pulisic with the Champions League, the Women’s team winning multiple World Cups, and the USMNT with the Gold Cup.

Football in the US seems to be enjoying another renaissance, and just as they did in the 80s, FIFA wants to stoke the flames by handing the 2026 World Cup to America. A new century, but US football seems to be following the same boom and bust cycles that have defined its history. But this time, things could be different… no, really!

One thing is different now

To make our point, we need to talk about the cinema. These were the biggest films at the U.S. box office during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. From “Rocky” and “Grease” to all of those blockbusters where Americans save the world from destruction, each of these movies is saturated with pure Americana! The U.S. was busy trying to make itself the king of culture, and there wasn’t much room for anything foreign.

Now imagine trying to enter this patriotic market with a foreign sport that many believed was communist. While the arrivals of Pelé and the World Cup did boost the sport, the effects were short-lived. Just look at this graph of the most popular sports in the U.S. over time. Football has always struggled to build on any momentum. This was because U.S. audiences treated football like a traveling circus, something everyone wanted to see when it was in town and quickly forgotten when it left.

For many, football’s biggest problem was that it simply didn’t fit the image of an American sport. “The reason that we don’t care about soccer is that it is un-American. It’s somebody else’s way of life,” said Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated in 2001.

So, how can football ever fit into U.S. culture? Perhaps it doesn’t have to, because U.S. culture is changing. Our U.S. viewers might have found themselves watching one or more of these movies and TV shows over the last few years: “Squid Game,” “Casa de Papel,” “Dark,” “Norsemen.” In 2020, “Parasite” became the first foreign language film to win the Best Film Oscar. Thanks to greater access through YouTube and Netflix, the modern U.S. audience seems to have a taste for foreign media, including sports.

This is the moment we usually mention “Drive to Survive” and the rise of F1. American investors have noticed this new environment, which has led to a significant power change in world football. Here are all of the clubs in European football that have been taken over by U.S. owners in the last few years. American investors own the table. There are now more Americans with an ownership stake in English teams than American players.

So, while the Chinese decided to pull out their money and focus on their domestic market, U.S. investors seem to be hungrier than ever for European football assets.

The 3 Reasons why Americans are investing in Football

But why are so many Americans buying football clubs? We can break it down into three reasons:

First: Buy a famous club, sit back, and hope it breaks even by winning some titles. Then let inflation do its work and potentially cash out.

Second: Content. Clubs like Venice, Fiorentina, or Wrexham all try to build entertainment brands. But who better to explain a content strategy than two actors from Hollywood? The ecstasy of trophies and the despair of relegation is the ultimate storytelling, and the American owners think they have found the perfect audience—Americans. They are not the first ones to have this idea.

Let’s look at the third and maybe most interesting reason. American investors are treating European football teams as undervalued assets that can easily be flipped for profit. Because they are shut out by the high valuations of American sports teams, they focus on the European market to spend their capital.

Powered by low-interest rates, broadcasters’ appetite for live sports, and an investment culture that prizes high-reward bets, that is exactly what they are doing: placing bets that imposing American expertise in live sports onto a traditional European club will produce quick financial gains.

The Big Misunderstanding

However, it seems to us that there is one big misunderstanding. One thing that unifies many American owners is the idea that there is some hidden value to be unlocked. “As an American, if you know what you’re doing there, you can add value.” But unless you think all the people who’ve been running football clubs in the past were idiots who didn’t know what they were doing, it’s hard to see the strategy here.

Thirty years ago, all of European football combined generated less revenue than the MLB, NFL, or NBA. Now, European football produces more cash than all three of those combined. A lot of that growth came from adapting US methods. But that also means that a lot of the potential all those American investors are speculating on might have already been realized.

To most football fans, supporting their club is about loyalty and passion; it is an aspect of their lifelong identity, a perspective that clashes with their portrayal as mere consumers of a product. So where does that leave us? Football is already truly global. But now the two superpowers have realized the potential.

While China is trying to build a World Cup-winning team with a top-down approach, the US is changing its relationship to football as well. Instead of distancing itself from the sport and marking it communist, the US is now trying to use football as a medium to spread their ideology—or at least to make money. Which is kind of the same thing.

David Beckham

Perhaps these American investors should pay attention to David Beckham. Beckham did the exact opposite by traveling from Europe to the U.S. to open a football team. Instead of attempting to integrate his ideas of football, he created a club that faithfully represents the community of Miami and their relationship with football.

Nobody personifies the marketability of football better than David Beckham. He shaped the Galacticos era, helped boost the image of the MLS in the US, and even worked as an ambassador for football in China!