PSG owners decide to take some English

French football club PSG owner Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) is considering expanding its football investment portfolio. One way could be to acquire a significant stake in the capital of the club of the English Premier League (EPL) Tottenham. The leaders of the Paris and London teams Nasser al-Khelaifi and Daniel Levy held “exploratory” talks on this issue last week. However, the Qataris are also interested in other English teams. There are plenty to choose from: such giants as Liverpool and Manchester United are put up for sale.

Qatar Sports Investments, controlled by the Qatari authorities, is considering further expanding its football investment portfolio. At the moment, it is small: QSI has been owned by PSG since 2011, and in addition, the fund owns about 22% of the Portuguese Braga. They were bought at the end of last year for about €80 million. However, to the extent that the Abu Dhabi-controlled City Football Group (CFG) can boast of, in addition to its key asset, Manchester City, owns stakes in another ten teams in almost around the world (the only continent where CFG is not represented is Africa), the Qatari fund is still far away. It must be said that the scheme, in which shares in many teams are concentrated in the hands of one owner, is becoming more and more popular. At the moment, more than 300 football clubs in the world are somehow involved in such holdings.

According to Sky Sports, the head of QSI, and at the same time the president of PSG, Nasser al-Khelaifi, last week held talks in one of the London hotels with the president and co-owner of Tottenham, Daniel Levy. According to sources CBS Sportsit was about the possibility of QSI acquiring a stake in the London club.

CBS Sports also claims that, despite Tottenham’s denial of the meeting, there is some solid evidence that the negotiation process is underway, albeit at an early stage.

According to preliminary data, we are still talking about buying a minority stake. Note that, according to last year’s Forbes estimate, Tottenham is worth about $2.35 billion and thus ranks tenth in the list of the most expensive football clubs in the world (Real Madrid received the highest estimate – $5.1 billion). That is, in any case, the purchase of any significant stake in Tottenham will not be cheap.

The main owner of the London team (85.5%), the investment company ENIC, had previously considered the possibility of selling the club or a stake in it, but each time things did not go further than intentions. However, as journalist Alisdair Gold reported at the end of last year, his sources assure that Tottenham management was informed that the club had reached its maximum value right now and now is the time to think about selling.

Tottenham Hotspur could become the fourth Premier League club in the last 12 months to be put up for sale.

First last spring was sold Chelsea (its owner Roman Abramovich was forced to do this), and last fall to look for buyers started Liverpool and Manchester United. By the way, the first is a fallback for QSI, in case you fail to negotiate with Tottenham.

Alexander Petrov