Football may not come home but US investors will still cash cheques here

The US continues to invest in the English football pyramid. Matt Bonass gives his best shot at explaining why

Football attracting money is not novel, but what has changed is the type of money, where the money has come from and the thinking behind it all. In a previous era club ownership was a passion project, restricted to wealthy individuals who had affinity for the sport and broadly felt relaxed about the financial returns. It would be overstatement to suggest that this era is over, but it is giving way to something quite different.

If you look at Deloitte’s recent 2025 Sports Investment Outlook, 50 per cent of all global sports investment transactions in 2024 were in football, with around 55 per cent of those coming from North American investors. In the prized Premier League, US investors now hold stakes in 13 of the 20 clubs and 24 clubs across Europe’s big five leagues. In a sense, football is changing from a luxury collectible to a structured investment class, with institutional capital treating the sport the way it treats any other asset with strong fundamentals.

This ongoing shift is not just happening at the highest level of English football. It is taking form in the Championship, League One and League Two, parts of English football that until recently would barely interest local investors never mind American investors. So what are the drivers? Asset scarcity in the Premier League, the significance of the valuation gap relative to US franchises, and the genuine belief that lower league clubs are commercially underdeveloped relative to their potential.

Saturation at the top

Currently there are only 153 major league franchises across leading US sports and many of them have not changed hands in decades. The home market offers limited room for new entrants and consequently when an American investor comes to market, the scarcity premium is often brutal with prices driven to levels that leave little room for institutional returns.

American investment in Europe is not something that emerged recently, investors have held on to Europe’s most coveted clubs in recent times from both Milan clubs to Roma and Atletico Madrid, to Olympique Lyonnais and the interest across the continent will continue to grow.

Each market has its own structural quirks that investors need to work around. In Germany, the 50+1 rule affects how stakes can be structured; Italy brings its own transactional and regulatory considerations; in France, media rights have made valuations less predictable; and in Spain, the largest clubs remain member-owned and effectively off the market. Equally, each market still needs to be worked through rather than avoided, and with the right local advisers, investors are continuing to get deals done. That said, England’s more open ownership model still draws in the widest range of investors, especially first-time entrants looking for a simpler way into football investment.

Valuation of football clubs

Along with the entry points mentioned above, Premier League clubs have become extremely expensive, with Chelsea selling for £4.25bn in 2022 and mid-table sides now carrying nine-figure valuations. For investors who want English football exposure without paying top-flight prices, the most likely position is to go down the pyramid, where the Championship, League One and League Two offer a credible route to Premier League revenues if promotion comes, at a fraction of the entry cost.

We have already seen US investment with the likes of Wrexham, Birmingham City, Ipswich Town, Crawley Town, Plymouth Argyle, Swansea City and Leyton Orient, with ownership stakes now even extending into the National League. Roughly around 19 to 23 of the 72 EFL clubs now have American or American-linked ownership.

Global footprint

From a commercial lens, English football remains the most reliable product at a global scale. There is also a growing synergy between the appetite for football in the US with the recent 2025-26 Premier League season becoming NBC’s most-watched ever in the United States, with average viewership of 1.2m viewers per match, and American fans consuming 18.33bn minutes of Premier League content across all platforms.

To put this into context, the NBC broadcasting deal alone, at £378m a year, generates more broadcast revenue than the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 earn from every international market in the world put together.

The 2026 World Cup is underway featuring 48 teams and 104 matches across 16 cities. Analysts cited in Gabelli Funds’ 2026 Fifa World Cup investment outlook project a 20-30 per cent uplift in club valuations if US appetite translates into sustained fandom rather than a four-week spike, which remains the key question. 

All things considered what is already obvious is that the market is crowded, and the easy money has largely been made. 72 EFL clubs cannot all get promoted. However, the underlying commercial story remains intact, and the money will keep coming to the UK because there is probably nowhere better to put it.  Football may not come home, but the world keeps sending its cheques here.

Matt Bonass is co-head of law firm Bird & Bird’s International Corporate Group