Glazers, Sheikhs, and the Government of China – Football Club Owners in the Premier League

A new graphic from SBO looks into the owners of Premier League football teams, and just how much they’ve paid into their clubs – with the top figure being £2 billion, Roman Abramovich’s investment into Chelsea FC.

If you’ve ever held aspirations of owning a football club in the Premier League, you might have to win the lottery a few times.

Research from SBO shows the investments club owners have made in order to possess their teams, and even the smallest in the top ten is £105 million – making it quite the pricey game to maintain a top football club.

Hey, Big Spender

Overall, the investment in clubs from the Premier League was roughly £5.15 billion – with £2 billion of that being contributed by Roman Abramovich. The top five investors into the League were as follows:

1. Roman Abramovich – Though he started as a street trader, Abramovich has come a long way, now with the greatest investment in any football club in the League. Chelsea have benefitted from £2 billion of the Russian businessman’s money.
2. The Glazer Family – Big sports fans, the Glazers don’t only own Manchester United with their stake of £800 million: they also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League in America.
3. E. Stanley Kroenke – Kroenke owns several sports teams, primarily in America, including the Los Angeles Rams. His only UK team is Arsenal FC, though there have been a number of protests and complaints from supporters of the team over his management (despite his £450 million investment).
4. John W. Henry – owner of diverse holdings such as the Boston Globe newspaper and the Red Sox, Henry has invested £300 million in his ownership of the Liverpool team.
5. Government of China/Sheihk Mansour – Bizarrely, ownership of Manchester City is split between a state-owned Chinese consortium and the deputy prime minister of the UAE, Sheikh Mansour. The Chinese CITIC Group have invested about £265 million, while Mansour has put forward £210 million.

To give some context, however, the highest-value player in the world, Neymar, has been valued at £217 million – meaning some of these investments aren’t enough to dominate the game

The lowest disclosed figure for investment across the entire Premier League was £70,000, from the Swansea City Supporters Trust into… well, Swansea City, in order to take advantage of a share offer which took the Trust shareholding within the club to 21%.

Whichever football team you support, make sure you know just how much went into it – look at the top investors in the Premier League on the full graphic below: