🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Rangers Have New Owners

What a insane match of Tennis at Roland Garros yesterday and what a tough loss for Jannik Sinner.

Since the beginning of 2024:

• Sinner vs Everyone else on the ATP Tour: 73–2

• Sinner vs Alcaraz: 0–4

This has plenty of time to turn back in Sinner’s favour, but at the moment it really seems like Alcaraz has Sinner’s number at the moment. Which is proving to be lucrative for him.

Alcaraz picks up his 5th Grand Slam at just 22 years old and pockets $2.9m for his efforts.

His career earnings surpass $44m as a result 😮‍💨

Today, more American money enters our beautiful game.

On 30th May the 49ers Enterprises acquired a 51% controlling stake in Rangers for a reported £61 million. The deal means the parent company of the San Francisco 49ers deepen their portfolio of global sporting assets, and also adds more American capital to the European football ecosystem.

The deal is fascinating to me for a few reasons.

1. The Size of the Deal

2. The growth of the 49ers ownership model

Typically SPL clubs are valued in the tens of millions, rather then the hundreds of millions seen in the English Premier League. This deal marks the largest Scottish club acquisition in modern times which suggests the market is trending in the same direction as in England. But Rangers are a historic club with an excellent stadium and a deep history in European football. Part of me expected size of the deal to be a little… higher!

Chelsea Women for example, just sold 10% of the business at a £200m valuation. No part of me thought Chelsea’s Women’s team would be worth considerably more than Rangers FC… but here we are.

The second reason is the 49ers Enterprises deepening their global portfolio. They can officially now be considered multi-club owners and are growing their transatlantic asset suite. Their setup currently looks like this:

• 🇺🇸 San Francisco 49ers (Full ownership)

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Leeds United (Full ownership)

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Rangers FC (Controlling ownership, 51%)

We can see over the next few years if this acquisition works out by looking at one simple metric.

Rangers posted consecutive years of annual losses after re-forming in 2012. Between 2012 and 2021, annual deficits were standard with a peak at -£14.4m in 2013. A brief return to profit in 2022 gave hope, but the club slipped again, with a £17mloss in 2023/24.

Celtic, by contrast, reported a £17.8m profit in 2023/24.

Put simply, the gap between the two is widening and the current model wasn’t working. The 49ers have guaranteed an additional £20m will be spent on club improvements. If they close the gap to the noisy neighbours, they will be onto something.

Finally, the Club World Cup starts this week.

The newly revamped tournament is worth up to $125 million to the winner.

European teams get $12.8M just for making it! Some of the elite clubs get even more.

Each group stage win gets $2 million for any team. If you get out of the groups its $7.5m. Win a quarterfinal? Add $13.1 million to that number. Make the final? That’s $30 million.

Win it? Another $40 million to the winner.

Let’s be clear. The prospect of the Super League spooked UEFA. Since that famous summer in 2023 we now have an expanded and more lucrative Champions League and now an extremely lucrative Club World Cup. Elite teams now have the possibility of adding close to $300m per annum to their bottom line through European competitions.

Something that they couldn’t do before.

Infantino staved off the vultures two years ago, but the football calendar is becoming more-and-more congested. And the cosying up to Saudi Arabia’s coffers is happening before our very eyes.

To get early access to my series on Saudi Arabia make sure to register your interest here. It’s some of the best content I’ve ever made.

See you next week.

JM