Private Equity Is Buying Up the World of Football
Football confederations revolted against Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup. But the failure of his scheme won’t affect the bigger picture as private-equity firms gobble up football clubs in pursuit of short-term gains.
While football clubs are relatively high-risk assets, the willingness of fans to support their local teams will persist in spite of economic uncertainty. Private equity firms want to exploit this loyalty, and they’ve been investing heavily in the sport. (Jaime Saldarriaga / AFP)
Les Girondins de Bordeaux is one of France’s most historic and decorated football clubs, with a record of winning six League 1 titles and nurturing star players from Zinedine Zidane to Jules Koundé and Aurélien Tchouaméni. Yet at the start of the 2025–26 season, the club found itself on the verge of collapse, struggling to survive in the fourth tier of French football, after years of financial mismanagement, debt, and administrative sanctions.
The fate of Bordeaux exemplifies a broader trend across professional football where financially fragile teams have been pushed to insolvency, accelerated by the pandemic. However, Bordeaux still possesses one of the most respected youth academies in France, an underused stadium that seats 42,000, and a loyal local fan base (including my own family). Earlier this month, Sparta Capital, a British-based investment firm, bought the club for one symbolic euro (after raising €10 million to buy its debt).
This “phoenix strategy,” a financial-speak term for the practice of private equity firms buying up struggling organizations to turn them around, has become an increasingly important phenomenon in the economy of the world’s most popular sport. It has attracted much less attention than Gianni Infantino’s abortive scheme to sell off rights to the World Cup that is still convulsing the world of football.
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