If it seems like private equity is beginning to increasingly invest in sports globally, blame soccer. European football opened up sports to private equity investment in 2006, when Ligue 1’s Paris Saint-Germain was purchased by three American PE funds in the first sports deal of its kind.
While PE has expanded into other sports, it remains deeply interested in soccer and probably devotes more of its investment efforts in the game than any other.
That said, each soccer league around the globe has its own policies on letting institutional investors in. Here are the guidelines around fund investment for the major men’s leagues around the world. The NWSL has its own explainer, here.
English Premier League
The Premier League, the world’s most popular and, by some measures, richest soccer league, doesn’t have a lot of rules around fund ownership—as long as potential buyers meet the league’s requirements for suitability and proof of capital, they’re largely allowed. But their buy-in is not always guaranteed. Everton’s sale to Miami-based 777 Partner was scuttled when the fund couldn’t provide an acceptable plan for improving Everton’s finances.
Chelsea is mainly backed by American PE firm Clearlake Capital, while Newcastle United isn’t owned by a PE firm, but instead by a sovereign wealth fund from Saudi Arabia.
Major League Soccer
MLS, the highest-level domestic U.S. league, has a well-developed policy around private equity that is more like other leagues in the U.S. and less like their global peers. In 2020, MLS voted to permit PE investment in its clubs. Among its parameters:
- A fund needs to have $500 million in overall assets.
- A fund can’t have one shareholder who controls more than 25%.
- No more than 10% of a fund’s assets can be invested in one of its clubs
- If a fund owns stakes in multiple clubs, MLS can’t account for more than a quarter of the fund’s assets under management.
- Funds can own a minority position in a maximum of four teams, and in each the minimum investment must be $20 million.
- On the club side, no club can sell more than 30% of its equity to institutional investors, and no one fund can own more than 20% of a team.
These rules probably have helped MLS club values skyrocket: As of Sportico’s latest MLS valuations, the average club is worth $678 million.
Liga MX
The most-watched soccer league in the U.S. (as well as in its native Mexico), Liga MX is opening up to PE as the league works to fashion its media rights and club ownership rules to attract more international investors. PE incursions to Mexico have been tentative so far.
In 2022 Apollo Global offered $1.25 billion to the league as a whole in exchange for a cut of international media rights. That deal never was consummated, however, when LigaMX teams couldn’t agree to accept its stipulations. Individual Americans have been buying stakes in LigaMX clubs of late, included Necaxa.
Bundesliga
In the Bundesliga, which arguably could claim to be Europe’s best league, rules are quite different. German soccer implements a ‘50+1’ rule, which requires fans own more than half of a club’s equity. Beyond that requirement, corporations and funds are permitted to have minority ownership. It is believed only one club, Augsburg, has PE investment—MSP Sports Capital holds a minority stake in the team.
LaLiga
Spanish topflight LaLiga does not have any restrictions on private equity or wealth funds. However, Spain’s sports law does apply limitations regarding the holdings of the same shareholder in several sports public limited companies—those holding a special legal status for a sports business called Sociedad Anónima Deportivas or SAD.
The law around SADs treats individuals and wealth funds, including private equity, equally, according to the league, in that investors of any stripe can’t own more than 5% of another team in the same league or sport. At one point in the past, all clubs in Spain were owned by their fans, but by now almost all have become SADs, which offer some specific legal benefits. Still, the best-known clubs, including FC Barcelona, Real Madrid CF, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna, are more traditionally owned and aren’t structured to accept direct PE ownership.
Private equity has a stake with the league itself. Luxembourg-based PE firm CVC has provided up to $2.4 billion financing in a joint marketing effort with LaLiga, in which CVC owns 10% of the business created to house certain league assets.
Ligue 1
France’s top soccer league has more liberal ownership rules, in which PE and other funds can own teams outright.
Four Ligue 1 clubs are owned by private equity firms—Clemont Foot 63, Lorient, LOSC Lille and Toulouse FC—while another two have PE investors, RC Strasbourg Alsace and Olympique Lyonnais. Paris Saint Germain is owned by the Qatar sovereign wealth fund, while two are owned by family holding companies that operate like PE, according to information compiled by Pitchbook: OGC Nice, owned by Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS Group, and Stade Rennais, owned by the Pinault family’s Groupe Artémis.
Serie A
Like Ligue 1, Italy’s top soccer league has liberal ownership rules, allowing private equity and other funds to own teams outright. Four clubs are majority owned by PE firms, while more have received some form of PE investment, such as debt financing, that can convert to equity in some situations.
Some of the best-known private equity firms own clubs in Italy. RedBird Capital owns AC Milan. A Stephen Pagliuca-led syndicate including Arctos Partners owns most of Atalanta. Oaktree Capital Management took over Inter Milan in 2024 when its Chinese owner defaulted on debt. A fourth club, Genoa, is owned by 777 Partners, which couldn’t close its proposed purchase of England’s Everton in 2024.
Série A
In 2021, the Brazil legislature passed a law that allowed Brazilian soccer clubs to reorganize from not-for-profit clubs to limited companies, meaning things like debt and investment—even full takeovers—by private capital would be welcomed.
Still, three years on, only five of Brazil’s top-flight Série A teams have reorganized as a Sociedade Anônima do Futebol (SAF), and of those, Bahia FC and Vasco de Gama have announced private fund investments. Still, more private equity is expected to flow into the country’s clubs in the future.