Will technology advancements take over human judgement in running clubs? Will fans have more or less of a say in how their club is run? Or will football increasingly be controlled by a handful of "club conglomerates" with a portfolio of satellite clubs?
Tuesday 12 September 2023 19:19, UK
Gone are the days of the local businessman-done-good chairmen acting as custodians for leading English clubs.
If you don't have the billions, you're of no use.
The last two decades have seen a giant shift in the make-up of club owners, but what do the next 20 years have in store?
Will technology advancements take over human judgement in running clubs? Will fans have more or less of a say in how their club is run?
Or will football increasingly be controlled by a handful of "club conglomerates" with a portfolio of satellite clubs?
As part of the Future of Football project, we asked the magic eight ball four major questions about the ownership of the game over the next two decades...
50+1. Barely in football lexicon before April 2021, the European Super League's rise and swift fall prompted calls for English clubs to implement the German ownership model of members owning at least 50 per cent of a club, plus one vote, thus a majority.
In the Bundesliga, it works. Private or commercial investors cannot take over and push through measures that prioritise profit over fans' wishes.
But most experts say it wouldn't work here, at least not in the upper tiers.
Germany is fertile ground for this democratic approach, as Englishman Jacob Sweetman, who looks after international media at Union Berlin, explains.
"Germany is a country made up of members' clubs. Gardening clubs, card clubs, anything and everywhere. It's taken seriously on a cultural level, and people are active within their clubs.
"The level of day-to-day fan engagement in clubs here is significantly greater in England. It's a mentality: you're a part of a club, not just a fan."
So why not in the Premier League? The answer is two-fold but not always mutually exclusive: culture and money.
"The English model is based purely on success," Sweetman adds. "In Germany, people don't care as much about competing with Bayern at the top; they care more about it on an organic level. Don't get me wrong, we're dancing in the streets at European qualification, but it's not the end of the world if we don't.
"Up to now, the fans have won. Even Hoffenheim returned themselves to members recently. I can't see German fans giving up a 50+1 model in the next two decades. But in England, I can't see it being implemented into a significant club. It's very sad. Right now, the average English fan is more wrapped up in the idea of success at all costs."
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire agrees. "It's unrealistic to expect the Premier League to have a majority fan-owned club. Even Championship clubs are losing £400,000k a week on average. Fans don't have the resources to compete at that level.
"Legally, too, it would be almost impossible for Premier League to implement 50+1. Who would vote for it? The Premier League is a share-owned club itself, where the individual shares are owned by Arsenal, Man City, Man Utd, Brighton etc. Owners won't vote for that because they'd be giving up their power."
The Premier League, and Championship to an extent, is a restless environment where hunger for constant linear progress - usually by increased funds - will always outweigh calls for a model focused purely on appeasing fans. After all, success, often at any cost, appeases most fans.
So the majority model is out. What about all clubs having a small stake owned by fans? Gary Neville says this is the only conceivable model for the Premier League.
"I don't think you'll ever have a fan-owned club in the Premier League. The model is too far gone and has become too expensive.
"But you may see partial models. This could be either through a position on the board, with some type of voice, or a minority stake - that's more realistic. Personally I feel like fans owning a minority stake is an absolute must and I think with regulation it probably will come in."
The full fan ownership model has worked in England, but is suited to around third tier and below.
"There is a natural ceiling in terms of fan-owned clubs, and that is probably lower League One," says Maguire. "In the Championship, where the losses are huge, it wouldn't be an option for fans because they don't have the ultra wealth to fund clubs. And they do have other priorities in life!"
Phoenix club AFC Wimbledon, 100 per cent fan-owned, famously rose six divisions in two decades to League One, but in narrowly avoiding back-to-back relegations to non-league this year, there were increased calls for outside investment. That hasn't happened, but is it inevitable?
There's majority fan ownership, then there's Ebbsfleet Town. In 2007 the non-league club operated as an uber-democratic entity, allowing fans to pick the team, transfers, and even the future of manager Liam Daish.
Around 32,000 members, through website MyFootballClub, paid a nominal fee to have full control. After early success, novelty wore off and numbers dwindled, but the model lasted for six years; it tapped into the belief that as a fan, you know best.
But could fans even be trusted to run a top-level football club? Granted, many have suffered under owners who barely understand football, football business, or aren't businesspeople at all.
But hindsight social media football expertise, the beast we are all a part of, wouldn't necessarily cut it in the boardroom.
"While we consider ourselves to be experts, football fans generally realise we don't have the expertise to make operational decisions," Maguire says. "One thing we do enjoy as football fans is scapegoating - if we're the decision-makers we can't scapegoat ourselves!
"Decisions often require funding - that's when it collapses."
So fans will continue to speculatively choose starting XIs, managers and players. What's more tangible is increased fan influence on low-level operations.
Several Premier League badges were chosen by fans. Kits could conceivably be chosen by fans in future. There's already an increased influence on matchday facilities, transport issues, ticket banding and more. But to many that's a bare minimum. Generally, if it's anything to do with investment, core finances and on-pitch matters, it will be left to the 'experts' for the next few decades at least.
Don't like it? Protest away in the hope the powers that be are conscious and empathetic towards fans' interests.
Gerard Brand
"There is more interest for this and we shouldn't just say no [to] the investments. But we have to see what kind of rules we set in that case, because the rules have to be strict."
That's UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin on Gary Neville's Overlap podcast, barely shutting the door on multi-club ownership models (MCOs), barely allaying fears that it will threaten competition and give the richest clubs a bigger slice of the cake.
One of the hottest trends in football, at the start of the 2022/23 season nine Premier League clubs had ties to 25 clubs worldwide in an MCO model through either their majority or minority owner.
The benefits? Circumventing post-Brexit transfer rules, spreading your bets against relegation, sponsorship sharing and operational blanketing.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has been tracking MCO growth for a decade. "MCOs spread risk," he says. "If a club you own is relegated, it's a financial hit, but owning seven clubs means they're not all getting relegated, so investment-wise it helps reduce the downside.
"You can also have the same sports science, technology and training regimes throughout. You only need one HR department, and the big club absorbs central costs. Raw talent that isn't good enough to play in Man City's first team can gain experience elsewhere, play football and grow, while also getting used to the mothership's culture and systems."
British clubs, who until this summer struggled to directly sign European players under the age of 18 due to Brexit rules, could operate with European clubs in the model, grab youngsters to play in EU leagues like Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands, gain necessary work permit qualification points, then sign for the mothership. The FA has now designed new criteria to allow clubs greater access, but the trend of developing talent elsewhere is unlikely to slow down.
Maguire says: "Top clubs can effectively take players, give them a couple years' experience, and if they excel, you take them to England."
Seventy MCO models currently exist, up from 28 in 2017. City Football Group, Man City's model, stretches across 10 clubs in five continents. Brighton are now linked with Royal Union Saint-Gilloise (Belgium), and Aston Villa's owners V Sports kept their alliteration game strong by acquiring a stake in Vitoria (Portugal) in February.
Globally, more than 180 teams were part of an MCO model by December 2022, a 350 per cent increase since 2012. UEFA's Intelligence Centre estimates around 7,000 players globally are registered with a club in an MCO structure.
Eighty-three top-division clubs - 11 per cent of the total - have a cross-investment relationship with one or more other clubs, while the most prevalent country of origin for shareholders with cross-ownership relations is the USA, involved in 27 multi-club groups.
The upward curve is steepening.
Plus many, many more...
Ease of player development, transfer loopholes and sponsorship aside, the main fear is the threat towards the essence of sport itself: competition.
"The nightmare scenario is that football will be owned by perhaps a dozen different companies, and that isn't good for the game as an epicentre of local history, culture, memories," says Maguire.
"Then there's the issue of competitive balance and jeopardy. If two clubs are owned by the same person and play in Europe, it is possible to gain results and influence matches."
UEFA, and FIFA, will have to hold firm and tighten up. UEFA regulations state that clubs cannot hold shares in or have management control of another club in a UEFA competition.
Both Brighton and Villa owners reduced their stakes due to potential Europa League and Europa Conference League clashes this summer.
But there will inevitably be a push. An INEOS takeover of Man Utd would test the waters with OGC Nice in the mix, and there will be scrutiny of links between Qatar's PSG and United if Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani takes over.
But UEFA's power in this field is questionable. A loophole precedent was set in 2017 when RB Leizpig and RB Salzburg were allowed to play in the Champions League after Red Bull dropped their ownership of Salzburg. Given Salzburg hadn't previously qualified for the CL group stage since 1994, the leg up had already been accomplished.
Unless rules are tightened considerably, we'll see the heightened possibility of messy and soul-destroying scenarios.
Just imagine:
Farfetched as they may seem, can anything be ruled out?
"The options are that it stays like that or that we allow them to play in the same competition. I'm not sure yet."
That's UEFA president Ceferin, again not providing much faith.
The European Super League's closed-shop model came, went, but will likely come again. Similarly, MCO models will likely push the game further away from the many to the few.
Gerard Brand
It's the age-old social fear that the machines are taking over. The dramatic rise in development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made most of us question whether technology could do our jobs for us.
With the exception of actually kicking the ball, AI is making its way into every avenue in football. From the tickets you purchase online to the opposition you play in video games, there is the faceless AI walking you through it.
It begs the question as to whether AI could actually run a football club - could it balance the books, use data to sanction the hiring and firing of managers or possibly even pick the team?
After all, some club owners are accused of two main faults: being faceless - i.e. not knowing who exactly is running the club - and making mistakes.
You could theorise the idea that AI would solve both these issues: this technology is always faceless and it uses data to make the most sensible decision. But is this theory realistic?
Sky Sports has spoken to two AI companies at the heart of football. The first is Ai.io, who use their AI Scout app to help clubs like Chelsea, Burnley and all the Major League Soccer (MLS) teams recruit into their academies.
The app observes drills via video and uses the AI's knowledge of what makes a good footballer to generate a performance score. If the score is high enough, then club scouts will be alerted to them and they can be invited for trials or even be signed.
Meanwhile, data company Soccerment use AI to give every footballer at any level objective feedback and analysis to improve their game. One of the ways they track their data is by putting AI chips in the shin pads, which many professional clubs across Europe use.
Both companies focus on the on-pitch side of football - as that is the most common form of AI in football - but according to Soccerment chief executive Aldo Comi, there are some uses of AI in the running of clubs.
One of them is in ticket prices. "You can do a lot of predictive analytics, where you analyse the historical data of ticket sales, then take in consideration the weather forecast, the contenders of the opponent in the table and other variables," Comi tells Sky Sports.
"Then you can derive a much better pricing for your tickets to optimise the occupancy in the stadium.
"There are a few clubs already doing that and more will do in the future. That will help make football clubs being more and more efficient and better managed."
The problem in the link between football and AI, however, is this type of intelligence requires predictive data - and football is too unpredictable. That means human beings are still needed at every level of football, including executive-level positions such as owners.
"Football is difficult, it's peculiar," adds Comi. "When you have repetitive tasks, they are replaceable by AI but football is not repetitive. So I don't see replacements happening so fast or so soon in the future."
There is also a lot of emotion in football. As Richard Felton-Thomas, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Sports Science of AI.io, tells Sky Sports: "The human element should never go missing. There are things that we as humans instinctively know such as attitude and behaviour.
"They are nuances to everything where humans will always have to be involved in. How does a player deal with adversity if they're losing? How do they take instructions from coaches? You still need that human element to deal with the data."
So what does that mean? Can AI ever replace a figure such as a manager, sporting director, chairman or owner?
"I don't believe that AI should be seen as a replacement of any meaningful position in football," says Comi.
"I think it can be a support - a more and more important support - to a lot of different positions at any level, even for club owners.
"I don't think we will have AI managing a team, but I do believe in six months or less than a year you will have the assistant coach asking a virtual assistant to help them out."
But what Comi does add is, while football is too unpredictable for AI, AI is also too unpredictable for us.
"It's amazing to see how fast this technology is evolving," he says. "It's growing exponentially.
"I think a lot of interesting things will happen in the next six to 12 months on this front. I wouldn't be surprised to see the usage of AI to become something stable inside the most evolved football clubs."
Sam Blitz
Some 350 miles separate Bournemouth and Newcastle.
It's a distance that represents the longest journey any Premier League team will have to make for a top-flight game this season.
Geographically that makes the Premier League far more compact, parochial even, than its 'top five' rivals in Europe.
But the league's appeal stretches far beyond those 350 miles. In geography alone is the Premier League solely England's competition
By most other metrics it is the world's No 1 club football competition. In the 2019-20 season its global audience was 3.2bn, twice that of the Champions League.
International interest has contributed to soaring revenues and a financial armoury with which other leagues simply cannot compete, so too has grown the desire from foreign businesses to become attached to the product.
Foreign ownership is not a new phenomenon in the Premier League. Of the 20 teams that will begin the 2023-24 campaign, 15 have majority owners from outside the UK, with the US accounting for eight of them.
As we look ahead to the next 20 years, is there any reason we may see a diminishing in club ownership from the USA, Asia and the Middle East, or is it more likely we will see the trend continue and even accelerate?
The answer to this question lies in the Premier League's status as the best in the world. Financially it is dominant, with 11 of the top 20 in Deloitte's 2023 Football Money League coming from the PL.
The reality of its ever-growing wealth, with the Glazers reportedly valuing Manchester United at £6bn, is that the days of local businessmen hoping to hold a key stake in a Premier League club are long gone.
"It's where the big managers are, the best players, it's where the football is super competitive," former managing director of Sky Sports Barney Francis told the Financial Times.
"Owning shares in IT companies and property in Manhattan is not as sexy as owning a Premier League club."
The direction of travel appears set. A Premier League club will only become more desirable to the elite mega-rich looking to buy a ticket into this most exclusive of circles.
Is there any sign of this changing within the next 20 years?
For pattern to be broken the Premier League would need to lose its status atop the club football tree.
Clearly, the Saudi Pro League offers the newest and, as such, most unknown rival to that claim.
Armed with effectively unlimited funding from the country's sovereign wealth fund, four clubs in the league have ruptured the global transfer market in one window, tempting household names to a previously unheralded competition.
In spite of its relative anonymity as a product, and with the Saudi state looking to sport as a strand of its plan to diversify the economy away from reliance on non-renewable oil, could there be a new major player at the table?
Still, while there is a great deal of intrigue in the Pro League, it seems unlikely that it will pose a threat to the Premier League's status, and therefore its appeal to foreign owners, any time soon. The Premier League, built on decades of tradition and community, is profitable, while the Saudi league is not, and shows little sign of being profitable in the short or medium term.
"Something is changing obviously," Premier League chief executive Richard Masters told Front Office Sports podcast. "The Saudi Pro League have announced that they want to be a top 10 league over a period of time. They're clearly investing ahead of revenue.
"The Premier League is a £6bn economy. All of that money generated is reinvested back into the competition itself in terms of running it, and players and managers. So at some point, all leagues have to generate revenue in order to be sustainable in the long term.
"We've taken 30 years to get to the position we're in at the moment, which I think is a really fantastic football competition that people can buy into and support, watch all over the world and feel part of. So it's a long journey for anyone, including the Saudi Pro League, but of course they're entitled to buy players as much as any football club is."
If the league appears set to retain its global status, then the other major factor that could reverse the trend of foreign ownership is reckless behaviour which draws the ire of supporters.
The short-lived involvement of six top-flight clubs in the ill-fated European Super League demonstrated the unrivalled power of a club's support.
The recently published white paper from the UK government has given assurances that fans will have a greater say in who owns their club.
This is, however, unlikely to put off any foreign or even state ownership which, as confirmed by UK government, will not be clamped down on when an independent football regular is appointed.
On the contrary, Qatar's interest in purchasing Manchester United suggests that states feel a Premier League is an increasingly realistic possibility following the UAE's purchase of Manchester City and more recently the Saudi PIF's takeover of Newcastle.
The Newcastle takeover was greeted with enthusiasm by the majority of the fanbase. An April 2020 survey conducted by the Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) found that 96.7 per cent of respondents were in favour of the takeover.
This was in spite of many raising concerns over 'sportswashing'; the idea that the state is investing in sport in order to obscure its poor human rights record.
The NUST survey found that despite these concerns, most fans remained on board with the takeover due to the poor position the club found itself in under the previous ownership of Mike Ashley.
A Manchester United Supporters Trust open letter to prospective new owners revealed much the same sentiment.
"The present owners have taken hundreds of millions out over a prolonged period of time, during which the club has been failing," they said.
"There should be no rewards for failure, and the first priority for profits should always be reinvestment into the club."
Therefore, the door for foreign and even state ownership in the Premier League remains firmly open, and that is set to continue as the value of the clubs continues to skyrocket.
Michael Morrow
