Six Football Club Deals in Six Months: A Sell-Side Perspective

6 consecutive months. 6 closed deals.

2 takeovers. 4 minority stakes.

Across England, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

All deals were sell-side.

Only one of those deals involved another party on the other side. The rest I personally originated and advised on throughout.

One deal closed while I was on a cruise ship in Antarctica. The rest were completed while operating from Paraguay and the UAE.

The clubs did not issue a “for sale” sign with a press release. I did not sit around waiting for a buyer to appear. I did the work.

None of these deals were straightforward.

I did not need to do a stadium visit to win the mandate or close the deal. In fact, I have not met any of the buyers in person, and I had never met half of the club boards or ownership groups in person either. Pre-2020, that would have been far less likely. Times change. AI will only accelrate this trend.

In football club M&A, plenty of brokers are good at talking about deals, posting about rumours and trends, angling for retainers to run lengthy processes and circulating opportunities that never close. Most want a job.

Closing and doing deals consistently takes persistence and, in most cases, a broker and an army of lawyers willing to grind until it gets done.

This run has come from the unglamorous, time-consuming part of the process: passing on weak buyers and dreamers early, avoiding capital-raising consortium types, spotting flaky sellers fast, keeping a non-serious list with a three-red flag system and focusing time on serious people who communicate clearly, know what they want and have real capacity to execute.

Some deals have not gone to plan. Some have dragged out and evolved. Sometimes you can do everything possible to make a deal happen and it still does not close, which can be quite a nigthmare. That is why working with a buyer who genuinely wants to close is so important.

The more I do this, the more I believe improving the odds is less about doing more, and more about eliminating the people who were never going to make it to the finish line in the first place.

Protect your time.
Ignore the noise.
Pick the winners.