Bournemouth owner Bill Foley is in advanced talks about buying a minority stake in Scottish Premiership side Hibernian.
Foley, 78, is the managing partner of Black Knight Football Club, a group of American investors who bought Premier League side Bournemouth last December and then acquired a 30 per cent stake in French side Lorient a month later.
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Earlier this month, the group, which includes Chicago Bears minority owners the Ryan Family and Hollywood actor Michael B. Jordan, was named as the preferred bidder for the new A-Leagues franchise in the New Zealand city of Auckland.
The move for Hibs, as the Edinburgh-based club is better known, is not a surprise in terms of Foley’s plans, as he has made no secret of wanting to add more clubs to his group, but it is a crossroads moment for Scottish football, as it has previously resisted the march of the multi-club groups.
Until now, the Scottish Football Association has blocked anyone who owns at least 25 per cent of another professional club in Europe from buying shares in Scottish clubs.
But, with multi-club ownership now common across Europe, that ban has quietly been replaced with a more case-by-case approval process, although nobody has tested it yet.
That could be about to change, though, with Hibs among several Scottish clubs in talks with multi-club investors. Dundee, Dundee United and Livingston are just three of the clubs currently on the market.
For their part, Hibs have been open to new investment ever since former owner Ron Gordon died in February. The American entrepreneur bought a majority stake in the club in 2019 but passed away at the age of 68, only three weeks after publicly sharing his battle with cancer.
Gordon’s son, Ian, and wife, Kit, have run the club since then, with Ian recently stepping up from his head of recruitment role to an executive position alongside the club’s CEO Ben Kensell.
The Gordons currently own 67 per cent of the shares and want to maintain control of the club, so Black Knight’s stake, should the deal go through, is likely to be in the region of 15 per cent. However, this would probably be a first step towards a larger investment in time.
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Having lost their first three league games and gone out of the Europa Conference League after an 8-0 aggregate drubbing by Aston Villa in the final qualifying round, Hibs’ form has improved. With a new, young manager in the dugout, Nick Montgomery, the team went on a six-game unbeaten run through September. That came to an abrupt end with a 4-0 defeat by Rangers but Hibs drew 0-0 with champions Celtic on Saturday.
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The club’s last major trophy was the Scottish Cup in 2016, although they also won the Scottish Championship a year later. They have also won four top-flight titles but the last of those was in 1952, in the middle of a seven-year run when Hibs were one of the best teams in Europe.
As well as his football clubs, Foley owns the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights, the reigning Stanley Cup champions, and their farm team the Henderson Silver Knights.
Unlike many investors in multi-club football groups, Foley does not mind admitting that his empire has a pecking order, with his Premier League side at the top.
In an interview with The Athletic earlier this year, the California-based businessman said: “I’m just being honest – players want to move to the Premier League, and we want to give them that opportunity.”
It is very likely that Foley sees Hibs as the perfect stepping stone for players coming from the A-Leagues in Australia and New Zealand on a possible pathway to the Premier League.
(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)