This time last year, Barnsley were, according to their chairman Paul Conway, “humming”.
He meant they were bustling, buzzing and pulsating with vigour, and he was right: the youngest squad in the Championship were tearing into their more experienced and expensively assembled rivals. They would eventually reach the play-offs, only to lose 2-1 on aggregate after two hard-fought matches against Swansea City. Having just avoided relegation the season before, this was widely considered to be a real achievement.
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Barnsley are humming again this season, but not in the same way. No, they are humming in the only way a team bottom of the table — below even Derby County, who are in administration and have been docked 21 points — can. They beat Queens Park Rangers last weekend but it was their first league win since the start of November and only their third of the season.
All of this explains why you can find a “Conway Out” group on social media and club fanzine EyUP & Down has published a Barnsley “rage-o-meter” which ranges from “You’re contemplating ragging a telly off t’wall in t’boozer toneet for a 3-year ban” to “Crisis? What crisis?”
That, however, is mild compared to elsewhere in the Pacific Media Group (PMG) of clubs, of which Barnsley is just one. In fact, some fans think the whole group has gone from one definition of humming to another over the last 12 months.
Conway and his fellow investors own stakes in six clubs in six countries: Barnsley, Den Bosch in the Netherlands, Denmark’s Esbjerg, Belgian side KV Oostende, AS Nancy in France and Swiss team FC Thun. Barnsley are bottom of England’s second tier, as are Nancy in France. Thun are mid-table in the Swiss second division and Den Bosch and Esbjerg are flirting with relegation to the third tiers of their pyramids.
There are examples of these groups popping up everywhere. The Manchester-headquartered City Football Group (CFG) is probably the most famous and, in terms of silverware, successful example of the multi-club model, while Austrian-based energy drink Red Bull’s herd of clubs is the connoisseur’s choice. They are doing it on a slightly more manageable budget — a hundred million euros here and there, as opposed to £1.17 billion and counting in CFG’s case.
But have PMG bitten off more than they can chew? Six clubs sounds like six ways to lose a lot of money — and there are six sets of fans to moan at you.
Conway says no. In fact, he and his partners have just raised more than £60 million and intend to keep growing, with an eye on clubs in Germany, Poland and wherever else opportunities arise.
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“We are even more bullish on the multi-club model — it’s why we priced the SPAC (special purpose acquisition corporation) at $86 million (£63 million),” the 52-year-old American tells The Athletic, referring to last week’s launch of Counter Press Acquisition Corporation, a listed company formed for the purpose of buying other businesses.
In many ways, this week has been another spectacular advert for multi-club groups, as Manchester City pulverised Portuguese champions Sporting Lisbon 5-0 in Portugal on Tuesday, only for Red Bull Salzburg to get within a whisker of a famous Champions League victory over Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
Salzburg fielded the youngest team to start a Champions League match for nearly 20 years, while their opponents were managed by Julian Nagelsmann, a coach Bayern poached from Salzburg’s sister club RB Leipzig last year. Bayern also had Dayot Upamecano and Marcel Sabitzer on the bench, who joined them from Leipzig for more than £50 million this summer.
And while that game was taking place, Liverpool were beating Inter in Milan, with Ibrahima Konate, Naby Keita and Sadio Mane — all graduates of the Red Bull finishing school — in their ranks.
“Supporters of respective clubs (in a multi-club model) will appreciate the benefits that come from being part of a larger ecosystem,” says Brett Johnson, an LA-based investor who has large stakes in two United Soccer League teams, with a third coming on stream next year, as well as minority shareholdings in EFL side Ipswich Town and FC Helsingor. “It should allow their club to punch above its proverbial weight class in its respective league.
“I’m not saying any of this is easy, because it’s not, but one plus one plus one can equal a lot more than three, if done right. And that is ultimately easier than running one team in one market.”
That is the theory, anyway, and it is one the owners of Watford and Udinese, and Leicester and Leuven, and Brentford and Midtjylland — and every other football conglomerate — are trying to prove.
It is something of an understatement to say that both CFG and Red Bull have interesting stories to tell in terms of how they got so good, so quickly, but nobody can dispute how big they are now when we consider enterprise value, trophies and turnover. Who knows? One day, they may even make profits!
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CFG, thanks to Manchester City’s huge commercial and media income, has come closest, losing only £84 million in 2019, but the pandemic hit hard and 2020’s group loss was £204 million. The Premier League mothership is the only one of the 10 CFG clubs that looks like turning consistent profits any time soon, although every investor in Major League Soccer — and CFG thinks it has the best house on the street in New York City FC — has presumably done so because they believe the 2026 World Cup is going to unlock the potential of America’s fastest-growing sport (for the last 40 years).
It is harder to get handle on the finances of the Red Bull empire — which includes MLS’s New York Red Bulls, two teams in Brazil, one in Vietnam and feeder teams in Austria and Germany — as it does not publish much data. For example, RB Leipzig would have made the 2021 Deloitte Football Money League, the top 20 teams in the world by revenue, if Red Bull had shared the club’s numbers with Deloitte, but those figures did not become available until European football’s governing body UEFA revealed them.
Having reached the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2020 and finished runner-up in the Bundesliga last season, Leipzig are a £200 million-plus business these days, but they have required significant investment from their parent company. Red Bull, which sells almost £4.5 billion of highly-caffeinated liquid a year, wrote off a loan of more than £80 million in 2019.
“It is debatable if any group has successfully managed a multi-club portfolio of clubs beyond the major geopolitical players like CFG and Red Bull,” explains Jordan Gardner, co-owner of Danish second-tier team FC Helsingor.
“The reality is it’s incredibly difficult to run one club well, let alone multiple clubs in various foreign jurisdictions. In order to successfully implement a multi-club model, you need to have significant holding-company-level infrastructure to make sure the clubs are run efficiently, and most importantly interact seamlessly with each other in order to gain the maximum benefit from the whole concept.”
For CFG, the group’s business operations are headed by CEO Ferran Soriano, and the football strategy is overseen by Txiki Begiristain and Brian Marwood. Red Bull’s player-trading success was built on current Manchester United interim manager Ralf Rangnick’s genius as the group’s sporting director. The fact that the former has also been generously backed by various Abu Dhabi-based companies and the latter by Red Bull founder Dietmar Mateschitz has helped, too.
When Gardner looks at the smaller multi-club groups, he does not see the same level of top-down control or unflinching financial support.
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“Maybe they’re seeing something I’m not, but it sure looks like the current players in the space are just buying clubs for fun rather than any strategic purpose,” says Gardner. “It should be no surprise that many of the clubs in these portfolios are struggling on and off the pitch.
“Investors should focus on one club, understand how to run that club well and efficiently before even thinking of expanding beyond that. I’d point to (US-based investment firm) RedBird Capital Partners, who own Toulouse FC, and what we’ve done with Helsingor as two examples of a measured, strategic approach to club management.
“The multi-club model can be successful but, like everything else in this business, it takes patience, humility and a really smart group of people at the helm.”
At present, the clubs in which Johnson has invested operate independently, but he wants to “explore the synergy of multi-club ownership” once his third USL team launches.
“Investors are interested in diversifying their equity across multiple geographies, leagues, playing levels, revenue streams and infrastructure,” Johnson tells The Athletic. “There’s clearly synergy if I can sign and develop young players in my USL League One Team (in Tucson) and graduate the best and brightest to my Championship team in Rhode Island. Additionally, I see synergy in being able to offer players the opportunity to play in Denmark, via my partnership with Jordan Gardner at FC Helsingor.
“There are benefits in recruiting and retaining players and coaches, if you can highlight a pathway to advance within your own eco-system. Additionally, there’s some back-office synergy on the finance, legal, accounting, player contracts, sponsorship fronts to have a more experienced, centralised team handling a lot of the day-to-day minutiae.”
Existing examples of those synergies would be how CFG spread the cost of their senior management team across the group and provide commercial partners with multiple shop windows for their products. Another would be the talent-development environment Red Bull has created at its clubs.
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A former international player for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sabrina Buljubasic became the first female CEO of a men’s club in the Balkans when Malaysian businessman Vincent Tan appointed her at FK Sarajevo in 2016. Tan purchased the Bosnian club in 2013, the same year his first club, Cardiff City, reached the Premier League. A year later, he joined the ownership group of MLS expansion franchise Los Angeles FC, and in 2015 he bought Belgium’s KV Kortrijk.
Buljubasic agrees that a multi-club approach can deliver all those wonderful synergies — but only if you have the right foundations in place.
“Without a good structure, the group cannot provide the necessary support between the clubs,” she explains.
“There were certain steps that Vincent Tan took in regards to the teams working as a group, but they only reached the starting phase and more work was needed to deliver the desired outcomes. The key point is the big decisions must come from an outsourced management, whose main obligation would be for the structure to work in collaboration.
“Owning several clubs does not have to be a distraction if you clarify the strategies for each club and they complement each other. The distraction is when there is a lack of people steering the group structure.”
Tan has been open to offers for his clubs for several years and did manage to hand over Sarajevo to a Vietnamese group in 2019 only for them to run into financial difficulties, forcing him to retake control.
Buljubasic played a significant role in keeping Sarajevo afloat during this period but stood down as the club’s CEO last year. Her final piece of advice for would-be multi-club group creators is interesting given Tan’s controversial decision to change Cardiff City’s badge and playing colours, as well as Red Bull’s year-zero approach to its teams’ histories.
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“It is key to remember that each club is unique to the country it comes from,” she warns. “The group structure should not change the culture or history of the club but work to help each club reach a higher potential.”
Red Bull’s Mateschitz would probably disagree with the need to be so sensitive. After all, when fans of SV Austria Salzburg, Red Bull Salzburg’s former name, objected to him changing their colours of violet and white to red and white, he said the goalkeeper could wear violet socks in away games. It was the final insult for some and they formed a phoenix team, Austria Salzburg, who have climbed from the seventh tier to the third and still wear violet.
But keeping fans happy is something most multi-club investors have taken more seriously.
The teams CFG has bought in Australia and Uruguay have both seen their names, colours and logo change, but Mumbai City, New York City and Sichuan Jiuniu were new teams. There have been no discernible changes at Belgium’s Lommel or French side Troyes yet, or at Girona in Spain or Japan’s Yokohama F. Marinos — clubs in which CFG is not the majority owner.
Some fans at Melbourne City and Montevideo City Torque may miss their old kits but there is nothing like winning to help people forget. Fleetwood Town presumably intend to do likewise with the red-and-white-liveried Fleetwood United in Dubai and Western Cape Fleetwood FC in South Africa.
John Textor, who became the largest shareholder at Crystal Palace last year and has since bought stakes in Brazil’s Botafogo and Belgian second-tier side RWD Molenbeek, is adamant no club he gets involved with will ever feel like a bit part.
“No club should ever be a feeder for another club,” the American tech and media entrepreneur tells The Athletic. “The benefits of collaboration have to flow both ways.
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“Before I had a chance to even script the message, fans in Brazil overwhelmed the fans in south London with a warm embrace, calling them brothers and agreeing on social media to despise their respective rivals. Botafogo fans were all over the social media pages of Brighton, teasing them, and Crystal Palace fans did the same to Flamengo. Our fans are smart enough to understand why this is good for each club without me having to tell them why.
“And neither set of fans has any questions about my passion as a supporter of their favourite club. I’m more open about my feelings as a fan than some of the other more business-minded multi-club investors I’ve met. Maybe that’s the difference.”
Back in Barnsley, it was always going to be difficult to replicate last season and events have conspired to make that task even harder. They lost their manager — Valerien Ismael, who joined West Brom — their best midfielder and talismanic striker in the off-season, and their chief executive moved on, too. Brexit-related paperwork slowed summer recruitment efforts and they have been unlucky with injuries. There have also been problems with their stadium, with one of the stands being declared unsafe.
There have been mistakes, too. Their first choice to replace last season’s manager did not pan out and the jury is still out on their second pick. Some of the signings have failed and the attempt to play a more measured style — in order to make their players more attractive to buyers — has not worked.
But Oostende are the only top-tier outfit in the PMG stable and their slump this season has been almost as marked as Barnsley’s. They have gone from the edge of qualifying for Europe to fighting the drop. As they were rescued from bankruptcy by Conway and co and last season was a minor miracle, the grumbling is limited.
That is not the case in Nancy, where 600 fans recently marched in protest against what they believe is PMG’s mismanagement of the club since buying them in late 2020. Pinned at the top of the Fans of Nancy Twitter page is a 45-tweet thread that recounts the rows, failed managerial experiments, league investigations into the club’s transfer dealings and many defeats.
So what is going on?
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PMG have recently been hired by Florida-based investment firm 777 Partners to advise them on how to run Genoa, the Serie A club 777 bought last year. Someone still rates them, then, and surely we should tip our hats to anyone whose first bit of advice to 777 was to suggest they hire Oostende manager Alexander Blessin, earning PMG another compensation fee for one of their coaches.
“On Barnsley, when you have six starters out with serious injuries and you have the third-lowest budget in a league full of ‘cheating’, it’s a problem,” says Conway. “But we will fight to the last match.”
Fair enough. Conway has been consistent on the English Football League’s failure to implement its rulebook, his group remains committed and Barnsley are still battling.
But perhaps the whole multi-club business model is flawed? Instead of cutting costs, pooling resources and providing multiple talent pathways, is there a danger you are just getting distracted and opening yourself up to more risks?
“No, multi-club also helps in the down years,” says Conway. “There has been a huge increase in spending in the EFL after the pandemic-related constraints of the last two years. We have lost out on targets by being outbid on wages by £12,000 a week.
“Success also leads to the poaching of staff, but we soldier on. We will just have to get even more creative with recruitment because we are not going to run up huge debts and we will continue to run an honest club.”
Again, to be fair to Conway and his partners — who include the Chinese-American businessman Chien Lee — they have stuck to that mantra ever since they bought Nice, their first club, in 2016.
They took the French side to the Champions League in their first season and then sold them for a healthy profit to British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe in 2019. That is the equity they have used to build their stable, adding new investors to the syndicate along the way. The most notable of these is Tampa Bay Rays co-owner Randy Frankel, although Oakland A’s minority owner Billy “Moneyball” Beane is a small shareholder at Barnsley.
Those two definitely know how to run sports teams and they are far from being alone in believing consolidation is the answer to football’s oldest business problem: how do we stop the bleeding?
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)