Jeff Thompson knows there are many people who want to buy what he has to sell. The phone calls and emails over the past few weeks left no doubt. And actually, that's not surprising. There are few industries as glamorous and prestigious as English football, and Thompson has a piece of it.
Admittedly, this is a relatively small piece. The team he has owned for almost a decade, South Shields FC, operates in the sixth tier of English football, several levels below, and is a world away from the bright lights and international appeal. Premier League. But while his team may be small, Thompson believes it is perfectly poised to be at least as profitable as English minor league football clubs would like.
South Shields achieved promotion to the top flight four times in his nine years as chairman. The team owns the stadium. Mr. Thompson spent a considerable amount of money modernizing the bathrooms, club shop and private boxes. He has a thriving youth academy and an active charitable foundation. “I've done most of the difficult yard work,” Thompson said.
After last year's cancer scare caused him to reassess his priorities, Mr Thompson reluctantly decided he needed to “pass the baton” to someone else.
This is where things get complicated. There are a lot of very wealthy people who want to pay money and get into English football. As Thompson says, it's “fun.” Owning a team gives you the opportunity to “be the hero” of the location. This offer was sufficiently convincing that within a few weeks at least four suitors (two British and two American) made inquiries about taking South Shields from his hands.
That's the advantage. The downside is that the Premier League has become a playground for private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, and the success of Welcome to Wrexham has led Hollywood searchlights to focus on the game's backwoods romance. , the English minor leagues have become his home. Even very wealthy people can feel poor.
National League North, the league from which South Shields were promoted, is dominated by part-time and semi-professional players, but the team's wage bill remains at around $1.2 million a year. (Still not the highest in the division.) Thompson estimates he has invested about $10 million of his personal money into the club. He knows he can't get most of it back.
And that's fine, he says. He is delighted to be able to create treasure in his modest hometown of South Shields, a place where “the quarters of obesity, poverty and unemployment are always wrong” That's what it means.
“I feel okay about it,” he said. “Even if it sounds like the words of a madman.”
The challenge is to find his successor who feels the same way. The South Shields he built boasts a healthy crowd, no debt and reduced risk. He doesn't want all his work to disappear when his successor realizes it's not raising as much money as he hoped. “I don't want it to wither on the vine,” he said.
chasing dreams
Simon Leslie doesn't know when or how his ambition to own a football team arose. It was something he knew, and something he had known for some time. “I always wanted to own a club,” he said. “I thought it was the coolest, sexiest job in the world.”
Prior to the creation of the Premier League 30 years ago, Leslie was considered a strong candidate to own the team, given his background (he founded Inc., a company that produced a portfolio of in-flight magazines, and sold his stake in 2022). would have been done. The upper reaches of British football.
But now the cost of entry into the top league is essentially out of reach for the simply extraordinarily wealthy. Jim Ratcliffe, one of the richest men in the world, recently spent well over $1 billion to buy just a 25% stake in Manchester United. Rising prices have further fueled inflation, meaning even entry into the second division, known as the Championship, is prohibitively expensive.
Mr Thompson said: “You need national money to buy a Premier League team.'' “Championship teams cost hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Last year, Mr Leslie instead realized his sixth-tier dreams, acquiring a majority stake in National League South mainstay Eastbourne Borough, South Shields' geographical rivals. In the elegant, coastal and artsy town of Eastbourne, Leslie saw an opportunity.
He had a bold vision for what the football team would become. It's a haven for players released from elite academies, maintained by a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center — “cryotherapy, cold plasma, everything,” he said — sandwiched in between. , the sea and the rolling hills of the South Downs.
It would be wrong to say that money didn't matter, but Leslie was prepared to invest. He spent about $600,000 in his first season and hired not only players but also sports scientists, talent spotters and chefs. He expects to invest the same amount in the second year. The goal is to break even by 2026, Leslie said, because “there's a limit to how much you can afford to lose.”
But the effects of inflation, which has driven even the super-wealthy out of top-flight football, are now being felt across different demographics of English football. Dozens of investors across the country are pouring billions into teams in the three divisions of the semi-professional National League. into the league, and even into the vast hyper-local amateur tier below it.
“It's not just teams from the upper divisions coming to sign our players,” Leslie said. “We have had clubs in the Isthmian League, the lower level, offer players more money than we pay.”
They can do so because, unlike the three professional leagues, the Premier League and the Football League, there is no cost control in England's minor leagues. Owners can spend as much or as little as they want, and the potential rewards incentivize them to do so. Promotion to the Football League would mean about $1.2 million a year in broadcasting revenue alone.
“People think they can make money in the National League,” Leslie said.
During his first few months at Eastbourne, he came to understand that it was not as easy as it sounded.
losing gambling
English football has an unfortunate habit of only looking at its beloved pyramid from the top down. As we move from the well-funded Premier League, through the ambitious Championship, and down to the dozens of semi-professional and amateur leagues below, the depth and breadth of the league system reflects not only the popularity of the sport. , which also seems to indicate its soundness.
However, when you look at the pyramid from the bottom to the top, your impression changes again. It's steep and daunting and quickly narrows down.
Only two National League clubs gain promotion to the Football League each season, providing much-needed television revenue.
“Clubs are spending exorbitant amounts of money to get out of the lower leagues,” said Christina Philippou, a lecturer in sports finance at the University of Portsmouth. “That means if other people want to compete, they have to spend similar money.” And that “creates a spiral,” she said.
It's drastic enough to surprise even those accustomed to it. Gary Douglas, chairman of Guiseley, a National League North side on the outskirts of Leeds, said: “It's shocking to see some teams spending money.” “There are teams that are quite small and suddenly have huge budgets.”
He says change is happening gradually. He first invested in football in his 2006 and teamed up with two of his friends to take control of Guiseley. Their combined wealth made the club “the richest club in non-league”, as Steve Parkin, one of the members of Douglas' triumvirate, said at the time of the takeover.
That's definitely not the case anymore. Money has been pouring into the minor leagues in recent years, even before Wrexham brought an unexpected fascination to the lower echelons of English football with both the team and the documentary. Now, dozens of wealthy owners are willing to bet that they will succeed.
“The National League is the golden goose,” Douglas said.
However, it is clear from the club's finances how risky that investment is. In 2022, the last year for which complete numbers are available, clubs in the National League's three divisions reported a combined loss of $25 million. Two-thirds of the league's teams were effectively bankrupt, with their debts dwarfed by their assets. This pattern is likely to be repeated further down the pyramid, where returns are even smaller.
“It's a disaster written there,” Dr. Philippou said.
For some, escape and promotion will be a relief. But far more teams and their owners are doomed to disappointment. Like Mr. Douglas, chairman of Guiseley, they may be forced into a financial and emotional turmoil and may not be able to quit.
“Once you’re in, you’re in,” he said.
Or, like South Shields chairman Mr Thompson, we may have to embark on a long and hard search to find a suitable replacement, someone who will build on our work rather than dismantle it. unknown. After all, that's kind of how the system works.
“The model is that when a particular person ends their journey in a club, for ego or emotional reasons, there's always someone new waiting,” Dr. Philippou said.
But it works, she added, because there's a belief that “someone else will come along.”
