Demand for stakes in English football is strong, writes Ed Barnett of Latham & Watkins, the firm that advised the Amit Bhatia-led consortium on its acquisition of a minority stake in Liverpool.

The recent sale of a stake in Liverpool FC to a consortium of investors led and managed by Amit Bhatia, the former Queens Park Rangers chairman, shows the summer's biggest transfers are not players but teams.

While headlines may focus on Manchester City's record £116m signing of Elliot Anderson, rumours are swirling around the ownership of several other Premier League and Championship clubs, and football deals are proving big business.

All to play for

US owners may control 11 Premier League clubs and be driving the current trend with their voracious appetite for English football — a group that includes Fenway Sports Group at Liverpool, the Glazer family at Manchester United and Stan Kroenke at Arsenal — but a much broader range of global investors is looking at deals.

A key driver is media rights. The Premier League's 2025 to 2029 broadcast cycle is worth £12.3bn, up 17 per cent on the previous one, including a domestic deal of £6.7bn with Sky and TNT Sports, and international media rights have grown in value tenfold since 2007. While that growth may now be slowing, the fact that even the bottom-placed club receives over £100m annually is pretty enticing.

Football clubs are also seen as asset plays as much as sporting ones, with stadiums a key element. Manchester United's planned new 100,000-seater stadium anchors a £7bn-a-year regeneration of the Old Trafford area, while Everton's move to the Hill Dickinson Stadium and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium regeneration have also reshaped asset bases. These infrastructure projects create lucrative mixed-use real estate investment propositions alongside football revenues.

Then there is the value of the brands. Deloitte's 2026 Football Money League, the annual ranking of the world's highest-revenue clubs, shows the top 20 clubs globally generated more than €12bn in revenue through the 2024/2025 season, with Real Madrid at the top bringing in close to €1.2bn. With investors keen to tap the commercial strength of those international fan bases, it is no wonder multi-club ownership is becoming more widespread, with half the Premier League now in some form of multi-club arrangement — a model popularised by global networks such as the City Football Group and Red Bull.

Finally, live sport is one of the few content categories that cannot be replicated or disrupted by generative AI. As a live event spectacle, English football takes some beating, with this year's compelling relegation battle highlighting the competitiveness and genuine jeopardy on show.

Tackling regulation

As new capital flows into the game, watchdogs are keeping a close eye. The new Independent Football Regulator introduced prospective owner suitability tests in May, adding additional scrutiny to this summer's deals. The regulator was created under the Football Governance Act 2025 after a fan-led review prompted by the collapse of the European Super League project, and also has powers over breakaway competitions and fan engagement. The Premier League will also continue to run its own tests of owners and directors, meaning two overlapping coordinated regimes now apply.

With Uefa clamping down on multi-club ownership models to protect the integrity of its competitions where clubs sharing owners qualify together, the league's profit and sustainability rules being overhauled in favour of squad-cost ratios that cap spending relative to revenue, and the Financial Conduct Authority taking more interest, football deals are getting more complex, taking longer and costing more.

Still, investors show no signs of being deterred; rather, Barnett sees more interest from well-capitalised buyers keen to become strong custodians of these important cultural and, in many cases, iconic assets.

More to come in the Premier League

Billionaires, sovereign wealth funds, investors in US sports franchises and private equity houses are all keen for a slice of football action, resulting in intense bidding battles that are arguably pushing up valuations. Barnett expects hot demand for Premier League and top Championship clubs throughout the coming season, with regulators working to ensure opportunists are challenged early as the new regime beds in.

The ultimate winners will be the smartly-run clubs that also do well on the field. They can now expect to tap into a diverse pool of patient, sophisticated, highly networked investors who bring much more to the transfer market than just their deep pockets.

Ed Barnett is Office Managing Partner at Latham & Watkins.