Chinese companies are spending billions of dollars buying stakes in European football teams, and Chinese clubs are breaking records for the amount of transfers that European stars pay to move to them, the Financial Times (FT) writes. Chinese President Xi Jinping has already announced his desire to turn the country into a great sports nation that will host and win the World Cup, the newspaper notes. The first steps in this direction have already been taken. Thus, a consortium of investors, which includes the Chinese investment group Everbright and the English PCP Capital Partners, is negotiating the acquisition of the English Premier League club Liverpool, Sky News reported, citing sources.
Liverpool is one of the most famous English clubs, it became the champion of England 18 times, won the country’s cup 11 times, the Champions League five times and the UEFA Cup three times. This year, he was ranked 8th in the Forbes ranking of the most valuable football clubs in the world with a capitalization of $ 1.55 billion and revenue of $ 471 million. The current owner of Liverpool is the American company Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
If the deal goes through, it will be the largest investment by Chinese companies in UK football clubs, FT said. However, Fenway Sports Group has no intention of losing control of the club, according to Sky News. In 2010, Liverpool cost her £ 300 million.
Football clubs are trophy assets, quotes FT Feng Sina, founder and CEO of Baofeng, who, together with Everbright, acquired a majority stake in Italian sports media agency MP & Silva in May this year. According to him, now Chinese investors have more funds for such transactions than Russian and Middle Eastern businessmen.
At the end of 2015, a Chinese consortium led by investment funds China Media Capital and Citic Capital bought a 13% stake in City Football Group, the owner of another English club, Manchester City, for $ 400 million.
In early August 2016, it became known that the Fininvest holding of the family of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a preliminary agreement with a consortium of Chinese investors to purchase 99.93% of the Milan football club. For the deal, the club with debts of around € 220 million was valued at € 740 million. In addition, Milan’s main rival, Milan’s Inter, was bought by the Chinese giant Suning Commerce Group two months ago. Then the group paid 270 million euros for 70% of the club’s shares.
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