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<SPAN class=news_story_title>Football Roils England as Hicks, Glazer, Abramovich Seize Teams </SPAN>
By Ryan Mills
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- David Moores, chairman of Liverpool Football Club, sits in the Marriott Hotel in London, mulling whether to sell the team his family has controlled for the past 50 years. Flanked by fellow Liverpool FC board members and a coterie of accountants and lawyers, Moores, 61, is weighing two offers for his 51.6 percent stake. One is from a pair of U.S. sports tycoons and another from the emirate of Dubai.
``It was obviously incredibly emotional for him,'' says Colin Gillespie, a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP partner and Liverpool FC adviser who attended the meeting on Jan. 30. ``It's a difficult decision to sell the family home because you don't have the money to renovate.''
One week later, the deal is done. The new owners are Americans George Gillett, who owns Vail, Colorado-based Booth Creek Ski Holdings Inc. and the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens, and Thomas Hicks, founder of Dallas-based private equity firm HM Capital Partners LLC and owner of the Dallas Stars ice hockey team and Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers.
In February they handed over 174 million pounds ($341.5 million), the second-largest sum ever paid for a soccer team. The sale is part of a trend toward foreign ownership of Premier League teams that's riling some English fans.
The English Premiership, as it's also known, is the most popular league in the world's most followed sport. Every week from August through May, the Premier League's games are watched by 76 million people in 190 countries, according to data compiled by the league.
Gold Mine
The fact that so many eyeballs in so many countries are glued to Premier League football makes it a gold mine for owners and investors. Four of the world's 10 richest teams by revenue play in the Premiership.
The 20 teams in the league took in an estimated 2 billion euros ($2.64 billion) in 2006 -- 47 percent more than the top Italian league, the next-biggest earner, according to accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.
With a new television contract in place, the Premier League's income is set to increase 25 percent by 2008 over its 2006 total, Deloitte says. The potential for big profits and the prestige of owning a Premier League team are what's pulling in foreign bidders.
The gold rush by rich outsiders has raised alarms among the most-ardent English fans and the international overseers of the sport. ``Foreign owners take the clubs further away from the fans,'' says Sepp Blatter, president of the Zurich-based Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA. ``If we don't stop it, it will damage our football.''
Glazer in Effigy
In England, animosity toward the foreign owners can be extreme. A group of supporters of Manchester United FC held a rally and burned American shopping center magnate Malcolm Glazer in effigy when he bought the team in 2005 for 790 million pounds, the largest amount ever paid for a sports franchise. Glazer also owns the U.S. National Football League's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
London's Sun newspaper caricatured Gillett and Hicks as Statler and Waldorf, the cranky old men who comment from a balcony on the goings-on during sketches by the Muppets.
Alan Keen, a member of Parliament for Feltham and Heston in southwest London, laments that the outside owners have no recollection of the time when English teams were community organizations that survived on low budgets and high enthusiasm. ``They've got no interest in football except as a moneymaking machine,'' he says. ``What worries me is the medium- and long-term future of the game.''
Keen cheers for Middlesbrough FC, which is still under local control.
Three Teams for Sale
When Liverpool changed hands in February, it became the seventh team in the Premier League to be bought by foreigners, all except one since 2003. Two additional teams, Manchester City F
By Ryan Mills
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- David Moores, chairman of Liverpool Football Club, sits in the Marriott Hotel in London, mulling whether to sell the team his family has controlled for the past 50 years. Flanked by fellow Liverpool FC board members and a coterie of accountants and lawyers, Moores, 61, is weighing two offers for his 51.6 percent stake. One is from a pair of U.S. sports tycoons and another from the emirate of Dubai.
``It was obviously incredibly emotional for him,'' says Colin Gillespie, a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP partner and Liverpool FC adviser who attended the meeting on Jan. 30. ``It's a difficult decision to sell the family home because you don't have the money to renovate.''
One week later, the deal is done. The new owners are Americans George Gillett, who owns Vail, Colorado-based Booth Creek Ski Holdings Inc. and the National Hockey League's Montreal Canadiens, and Thomas Hicks, founder of Dallas-based private equity firm HM Capital Partners LLC and owner of the Dallas Stars ice hockey team and Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers.
In February they handed over 174 million pounds ($341.5 million), the second-largest sum ever paid for a soccer team. The sale is part of a trend toward foreign ownership of Premier League teams that's riling some English fans.
The English Premiership, as it's also known, is the most popular league in the world's most followed sport. Every week from August through May, the Premier League's games are watched by 76 million people in 190 countries, according to data compiled by the league.
Gold Mine
The fact that so many eyeballs in so many countries are glued to Premier League football makes it a gold mine for owners and investors. Four of the world's 10 richest teams by revenue play in the Premiership.
The 20 teams in the league took in an estimated 2 billion euros ($2.64 billion) in 2006 -- 47 percent more than the top Italian league, the next-biggest earner, according to accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.
With a new television contract in place, the Premier League's income is set to increase 25 percent by 2008 over its 2006 total, Deloitte says. The potential for big profits and the prestige of owning a Premier League team are what's pulling in foreign bidders.
The gold rush by rich outsiders has raised alarms among the most-ardent English fans and the international overseers of the sport. ``Foreign owners take the clubs further away from the fans,'' says Sepp Blatter, president of the Zurich-based Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA. ``If we don't stop it, it will damage our football.''
Glazer in Effigy
In England, animosity toward the foreign owners can be extreme. A group of supporters of Manchester United FC held a rally and burned American shopping center magnate Malcolm Glazer in effigy when he bought the team in 2005 for 790 million pounds, the largest amount ever paid for a sports franchise. Glazer also owns the U.S. National Football League's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
London's Sun newspaper caricatured Gillett and Hicks as Statler and Waldorf, the cranky old men who comment from a balcony on the goings-on during sketches by the Muppets.
Alan Keen, a member of Parliament for Feltham and Heston in southwest London, laments that the outside owners have no recollection of the time when English teams were community organizations that survived on low budgets and high enthusiasm. ``They've got no interest in football except as a moneymaking machine,'' he says. ``What worries me is the medium- and long-term future of the game.''
Keen cheers for Middlesbrough FC, which is still under local control.
Three Teams for Sale
When Liverpool changed hands in February, it became the seventh team in the Premier League to be bought by foreigners, all except one since 2003. Two additional teams, Manchester City F