Why Multi-Club Ownership Can Theoretically Be Successful

City Football Group owns 13 clubs across five continents. Red Bull operates a network spanning Austria, Germany, Brazil, and the United States. Eagle Football Group speedran four acquisitions in 18 months. Either these billionaires have cracked a code the rest of football missed, or they're all making the same expensive mistake.

Over the past decade, multi-club ownership (MCO) has exploded from a curiosity into an industry phenomenon. What started with ENIC's dabbling in the late 1990s (Quansah and Breuer, 2025) has become a feeding frenzy: American private equity, Gulf state sovereign wealth funds, and European conglomerates are pouring billions into MCO models. The numbers tell the story: UEFA reports that clubs under MCO structures rocketed from 40 in 2012 to 180 by 2022 (UEFA, 2023). Today, 125 active MCO groups oversee roughly 380 clubs worldwide, with 41.7% of Europe's Big Five league clubs now part of multi-club networks (SportBusiness, 2023).

The pitch sounds seductive: economies of scale, global brand leverage, vertically integrated talent pipelines. But does it actually work? The evidence is mixed. On the one hand City won the treble but on the other hand 777 Partners suffered financial collapse in 2024.  

The answer is yes. Well, in theory. MCOs possess genuine structural advantages that make corporate sense. But football clubs aren't widgets, and football's unique cocktail of regulation, emotion, and chaos means those advantages are far harder to capture in reality. Here's why MCOs should work, why they sometimes do, and why they sometimes don't.

I - Synergy & Efficiency Gains

The most compelling case for MCOs is nothing as exciting as a Deeney's late winner, but it's just as much needed: operational efficiency. When you own five clubs instead of one, you can share resources, cut redundancy, and build systems that compound over time.

This isn't revolutionary, it is based in Corporate Strategy theories. Puranam and Vanneste's synergy typology identifies three pathways where value can be created (Puranam, 2016): combination (joint activities, e.g: joint scouting), consolidation (eliminating of duplication, e.g: shared admin functions), and connection (linking capabilities across units, e.g: shared marketing). MCOs can theoretically exploit all three.

Operational Synergies

Start with the obvious: scouting networks. Instead of five clubs each maintaining separate scouts in South America, Africa, and Asia, you build one global intelligence system feeding everyone. City Football Group doesn't scout Brazil five times, they scout it once, and Manchester City, Girona, Bahia, and Montevideo City Torque all benefit. The same logic applies to data analytics, where shared performance analysis systems, injury prevention technology, and tactical databases get amortised across the entire portfolio.

Red Bull takes this further with coaching methodology: their high-intensity pressing philosophy transfers seamlessly from Salzburg to Leipzig to New York, with youth coaches teaching identical principles regardless of continent (El-Daly, 2023).

Financial Synergies

Financial synergies follow similar logic. Sponsorship bundling means Etihad doesn't just sponsor Manchester City; they get brand exposure across CFG's 13-club empire, increasing their return on investment while giving CFG leverage in negotiations. Economies of scale kick in everywhere: shared back-office functions handling HR, legal, finance, and compliance for multiple clubs simultaneously.

Campbell, Goold, and Alexander call this "parenting advantage" (Campbell, Goold and Alexander, 1995): the corporate headquarters adds value beyond what subsidiaries could generate independently.

Player Development Pipelines

But the truly unique football synergy, one largely absent from academic literature on corporate strategy, is the player development pipeline.

MCOs can manage the full value chain: scout cheap in emerging markets, develop in lower-pressure environments, monetise at elite level. Red Bull perfected this model with players like Naby Keïta: signed from French second-tier FC Istres for €1.5 million in 2014, developed at RB Salzburg where the Austrian league provided competitive football without top-five league pressure, transferred internally to RB Leipzig for €29 million once he'd proven himself, then sold to Liverpool for €60 million in 2018. Red Bull captured value at every stage: €1.5M became €60M (Transfermarkt.com, 2025), with the network banking profits on both the Salzburg-to-Leipzig move and the final sale.

City Football Group operates similarly through their loan network, cycling players through sister clubs for development without losing registration rights. Academic research analysing 69,217 transfers confirms this isn't just theory: MCO clubs use internal loans 54% of the time versus 20% for independent clubs (Quansah and Breuer, 2025).

Now, whether such statistics represents innovative player development or sophisticated rule-bending depends on your tolerance for corporate euphemism. The loans serve both purposes admirably.

II - Strategic Portfolio Management

The second theoretical advantage is portfolio logic: spreading risk, exploiting market inefficiencies, and positioning strategically across football's fragmented landscape. This draws from diversification theory and Ghemawat's framework on geographic arbitrage (Ghemawat, 2001). MCOs don't just own multiple clubs, they orchestrate them as a balanced portfolio.

Geographic Diversification

Start with risk hedging. When RWD Molenbeek dropped to Belgium's second tier in 2024, Botafogo won the Copa Libertadores. Both clubs belong to Eagle Football Group. One club's disaster offset by another's glory. That's effective portfolio diversification in practice. This isn't just sporting risk mitigation: it's financial insurance against broadcasting volatility, local economic downturns, and regulatory shocks. Traditional corporate diversification logic applies here, but with a football twist: because leagues operate as independent ecosystems rather than correlated markets, geographic diversification might work better in football than in industries where downturns spread globally.

Table 1 and the BCG growth-share matrix (Henderson, 1970), adapted for football, helps visualize this: MCOs build portfolios of "cash cows" like Olympique Lyonnais (stable European revenue), "stars" like Crystal Palace (Premier League access), "question marks" like Botafogo (high-growth emerging markets), and "dogs" like Molenbeek (strategic regulatory bridges for EU player registration). It's basically the same reason you don't put your entire portfolio into Bitcoin: diversification reduces risk. MCOs apply that logic to football.

Table 1: BCG Matrix applied to Eagle Football groups

Market Arbitrage

But more than creating risk mitigation, geographic positioning unlocks arbitrage opportunities. Football's global structure contains massive revenue inefficiencies MCOs can exploit. Premier League clubs receive £95.1 million minimum from broadcasting alone (Matchday Finance, 2025). Belgium's Pro League clubs split approximately £70 million domestically (Saleh, 2024). Brazilian Série A operates on individual deals: Flamengo earns approximately £37 million annually from Globo, while Corinthias receives approximately £4.3 million per year (Research and Markets, 2024). This creates staggering arbitrage potential. Develop talent where operating costs are low (Brazil, Eastern Europe), monetize where broadcasting revenue is high (England, Spain).

Regulatory arbitrage matters too: Belgium imposes no quota on non-EU players making it an attractive entry point for talent (@TMde_news, 2025).

Strategic Optionality

Having clubs across multiple leagues also creates strategic optionality. Need to park a player during a complex transfer negotiation? Loan him to a sister club. Want to test a coach before promoting him to the flagship? Send him to the mid-tier club first.

Corporate finance scholars call this an 'internal capital market': the ability to reallocate resources (money, players, expertise) across subsidiaries more efficiently than external markets could (STEIN, 1997). In football, it's flexibility that independent clubs simply cannot match.

Convenient when you need somewhere to stash a €25 million signing who wasn't actually meant for Belgian football…

III - Structural & Practical Barriers

So why isn't every club part of an MCO? Because football isn't a normal business, and that breaks the model in ways corporate strategists cannot anticipate. Synergy frameworks look excellent on paper. But can they deliver on a cold rainy night in Stoke?

Regulatory Hostility

UEFA is actively trying to limit MCO advantages, and they're not subtle about it. Article 5 of the UEFA Champions League regulations prohibits clubs under common ownership from competing in the same competition (Uefa.com, 2025), a rule that forced Manchester City and Girona into elaborate blind trust arrangements in 2024 just to both play in Europe (UEFA, 2024).

Financial Fair Play adds another layer of complication: you cannot artificially inflate transfer fees between sister clubs to circumvent spending limits, which somewhat defeats the point of having a network. Lyon's 2024 crisis exemplifies how the multi-club model offers zero regulatory protection. When French regulator DNCG handed down a transfer ban and provisional relegation threat over €500 million in debt (Lyon, 2024), Eagle Football Group's "global portfolio" meant nothing. The regulators didn't care that Botafogo was thriving or that Molenbeek provided development pathways. They cared about Lyon's balance sheet. Full stop. Textor's multi-club structure couldn't save Lyon from regulatory punishment, proving that when domestic authorities decide to act, portfolio diversification becomes irrelevant.

Regulators treat MCOs with suspicion bordering on hostility, and they have good reason: they're trying to preserve competitive balance in a sport where money has become a determinant factor for success.

The Fan Problem

Football clubs aren't rational assets. They're community institutions with emotional stakeholders who don't care about group-level EBITDA optimisation. Lyon supporters protested Textor's management despite his success at Botafogo. Newcastle fans initially resisted Saudi ownership despite billions in investment promises. The Super League discussions proved that fans would reject pure commercialisation even when their clubs enthusiastically endorse it.

This creates a tension: MCOs generate value through integration, but fans tolerate MCO ownership when their club maintains autonomy and identity. You can have synergy or you can have legitimacy, but maximizing one undermines the other.

Execution Risk & Performance Volatility

Theory and practice can diverge significantly. 777 Partners' 2024 collapse proves portfolio diversification can amplify risk rather than reduce it (Nicholson, 2024). They owned Genoa, Standard Liège, Hertha Berlin, and Vasco da Gama. When the group imploded amid fraud allegations and creditors seized control, all clubs faced existential crisis simultaneously. The portfolio didn't save them, it contaminated everyone.

Football's unpredictability directly challenges corporate management frameworks. You cannot "manage" your way to winning. One injury crisis, one managerial meltdown, one refereeing disaster equals millions in lost revenue, and no amount of synergy planning prevents that.

Sometimes corporate headquarters adds costs rather than value. Campbell's 'value-destroying parents' applies perfectly (Campbell, Goold and Alexander, 1995): MCO headquarters can slow crucial transfer decisions through bureaucratic approval chains and impose strategic choices on clubs in markets they don't necessarily understand. Coordination requires time. Football doesn't give you time. And that's where the model is at risk.

Conclusion

So: can MCOs be theoretically successful in football? Yes. Are they often successful in practice? Sometimes. The model has genuine proven advantages: operational synergies, portfolio diversification, market arbitrage. But football's peculiar mix of sport, business, culture, and emotion creates friction that corporate strategy cannot anticipate.

After all, you cannot optimize a 90th-minute winner at the Kop end.

Acknowledgement

This research article was written with assistance of AI tools to research information, structure, formatting, and refining written expression.

Analysis, source evaluation, and arguments represent the author's independent work.

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