Dustin Hoffman has been a New York con artist, an autistic savant and a drag soap opera star in his 60-year acting career, but he’s never played a role like the one he had when he attended the championship play-off final at Wembley. He had to act as a prominent co-owner of Leeds United.
While current Leeds co-owners Russell Crowe, Will Ferrell, Jordan Spieth and Russell Westbrook are busy elsewhere, the two-time Oscar winner left to pose for selfies in the stylish seats before the match against Southampton, which Leeds lost 1-0. missing out on promotion to the Premier League.
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There, as a guest of 49ers Enterprises Global Football Group LLC, the American all-star syndicate that owns the West Yorkshire club, Hoffguy looked like a protagonist struggling to find motivation for his character, but he seemed to enjoy the pre-match speeches and a steak dinner.
While Hoffman pretends to be a co-owner of Leeds in the pre-match Wembley suite, the real co-owner of Leeds, Larry Nance Jr, in an Irish pub down the street.
At 6ft 8in (203cm), it’s hard to miss the basketball powerhouse, especially when he’s at the bar dressed in a Leeds shirt, hat and scarf, toasting everyone a drink and leading the way. While Hoffman flies the flag of the club’s theatrical supporters, Nance did more than honour Leeds’ sporting investors. And it’s a role the New Orleans pelican enjoys.
Nance Jr, who joined the owning organisation when the club’s takeover was finalised last summer, visited Leeds games (and pubs), contributed to charities supported by Leeds fans and spread his love of Leeds, Leeds, Leeds on podcasts and on social media. networks.
In fact, he met the Leeds co-owner in the draw two months ago, when the Pelicans hosted the Indiana Pacers, along with 49ers Enterprises investor and point guard T. J. McConnell betting on the latter. The NBA duo posed for a photo that read “Salute from Leeds” and the club posted it on their Instagram account with the tag “All Leeds, it’s not us!”, a reference to one of the club’s anthems.
But the co-owners of English soccer clubs who cross paths at North American sports matches are no longer the black swan they once were: Nance Jr. had already played three times against Westbrook of the Los Angeles Clippers this season before meeting McConnell on the court. . . Buying a piece of an English football club happens to be as common for a successful MLB, NBA, NFL or NHL player as buying a beachfront property or ranch.
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What started with LeBron James and Liverpool in 2011 blossomed in 2023, with the purchase of the Leeds 49ers gang, former NFL star JJ Watt and his wife Kealia, a former USWNT player, taking a stake in Burnley and the arrival of Tom Brady.
There has been a shift from a widespread indifference to football to data-driven studies on the right football spouse for your investment portfolio in a generation of professional athletes.
What do they bring to the table, apart from a few drinks?And what do they get in return?
“A lot of people are attracted by the fans’ interest in football here. I don’t think they see the same interest in groups in the U. S. ,” says Andrew Umbers, a partner at Oakwell Sports Advisory, a London-based strategic and monetary advisor. the sports sector.
“It’s also an opportunity to grow their private brands outside of the U. S. “The U. S. is receding, as the key foreign market for English clubs at the moment is the U. S. U. S. So if you can bring in an American superstar, like LeBron James or Tom Brady, who can give you great success in the U. S. , you can do it. If you want to go to the U. S. for a small amount of capital, why not?
James’ involvement with Liverpool stems from his relationship with the sports marketing firm owned by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the American conglomerate that bought the English club in 2011.
At the time, “King James” had just transferred his talents from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat as a high-profile free agent and becoming a global megastar himself. The connection with Liverpool drew the attention of Liverpool enthusiasts to his talent in Africa. Asia and Europe, while the connection with Liverpool opened the club’s doors to North America.
As part of the marketing deal with FSG, James landed a 2% stake in his new investment in football, just under £5 million, or just over $6 million, a small compliment compared to the backdrop of a career that has already earned him more. more than $6. 1 billion, according to the U. S. business newspaper Forbes.
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In 2021, James and his former chief commercial officer, Maverick Carter, traded that stake in Liverpool for a percentage of FSG itself, which also made them co-owners of the Boston Red Sox in baseball and the Pittsburgh Penguins in ice hockey. Two years later, they gained more percentages from FSG than their ties.
As for how that bond manifests itself, the club, James and Nike have teamed up to produce a variety of products: an ‘LFC X LeBron’ shirt featuring YNWA, as in Liverpool’s anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, on the front is on sale on the club’s website for just under £80, while the basketball tracksuit will cost you £155, and you can count on it to post a timely message on its social media.
– Liverpool FC (@LFC) March 6, 2024
It’s unclear exactly how much FSG currently owns, but even 1% of a company valued at more than $10 billion would be worth $100 million. As it turns out, the dates have been mutual (and that’s before you even contemplate the possibilities of an LBJ-led and FSG-backed NBA expansion team in a position like Las Vegas).
The Brady/Birmingham affair is, of course, much more recent, but the seven-time Super Bowl winner now owns 3. 3% of a club that has just been relegated to third place in English football. Sticking with the “all three” theme, those 330 “class B” shares have a par value of 3. 3 pence or 2. 6 cents.
Brady’s shareholding resides in Shelthrough Companies Ltd, the buyout vehicle used through U. S. investment firm Knighthead Capital Management to buy the EFL club last year. The name “Shelthrough Companies” is a nod to, uh. . . conglomerate owned by his circle of familiares. de that call in the Birmingham-based Peaky Blinders-era crime drama.
As for how this bond of legends came about, Brady, 46, met Knighthead boss Tom Wagner when his children attended the same in New York.
When the former quarterback entered the lifestyle branding phase of his car, he and Wagner first partnered to invest in a Major League Baseball pickleball franchise with former women’s tennis number one Kim Clijsters (you see, it’s not just random American athletes and English football), before joining a British sports car racing team. (James, for what it’s worth, also invested in pickleball, a racquet sport similar to tennis. )
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It’s unclear whether Brady committed some of his own money in Birmingham. When Wagner announced that his friend had become chairman of the club’s new advisory board, he referred to Brady as “investing and dedicating his time and vast experience” to helping the club become “an accredited leader in nutrition, health, wellness and recovery. ” When you’re as busy as Brady, time is money, I guess.
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) August 3, 2023
Like Nance Jr. , Brady did his part at the bar with fans before games and also made the club “the most talked-about football team in the world” when his minority stake was announced last year, and Wagner said the news had been generated. More than 17 billion positive impressions in the media. “He did not say how many refusals Brady had turned in.
“We’re talking about cross-halo effects,” says Laurie Pinto, a veteran of sports on both sides of the Atlantic.
“These athletes bring their fan bases, basically American, to the party and mix with the fan bases of those century-old, more than century-old football clubs, which, for the big clubs, are global. It’s a win-win.
“But there’s more to it than that. These guys know the sport, so they will obviously be interested in sports-related investments. The NBA’s most productive players have contracts worth millions of dollars, even the average players make tens of millions, and all of them have complicated money advisors.
“But it’s hard for them to get American sports franchises. First, there’s the maximum cost, simply because of the scarcity of U. S. groups and their higher valuations. But they also can’t do that as long as they keep gambling. LeBron can’t invest in the NBA until he finished his playing career, but nothing stopped him from owning a percentage of Liverpool.
“English football also has a very low cost of access for those guys, so it’s a low-risk, medium-reward type of investment. And it looks like fun. Everyone has noticed Ted Lasso and Welcome To Wrexham and needs to see it for themselves.
“It’s taken a while, but in the United States soccer is fashionable, and it’s becoming more and more fashionable. This trend toward equity participation is not going to diminish anytime soon.
Pinto’s point about the impact of Welcome To Wrexham, the documentary series about the transformation of a lower-league, celebrity-owned club, needs to be highlighted. While this article is particularly about athletes investing in English football clubs, many of them consider themselves stars similar to Ryan Reynolds and all would love to have the Canadian actor’s skill in marketing.
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Whether Watt can do for Burnley or Brady for Birmingham, what Reynolds and his business partner and actor Rob McElhenney are doing for Wrexham is a question for another day. But it’s saying that your money will have to be more patient than Rob. and Ryan’s if they’re looking for monetary returns.
However, Pinto points out another attractive point: Many U. S. -based professional athletes can now invest in European soccer clubs if they want to.
Nance Jr. , for example, is by no means an NBA star. He plays 20 minutes a night off the bench for a mid-level team, but that earns him more than $10 million a year. A footballer in his youth, Nance Jr. He had been looking for a team to sign up for several years before learning about the opportunity to buy Leeds through Rudy Cline-Thomas, one of the NBA’s most successful player agents.
It was Cline-Thomas who also brought in Westbrook and former Golden State Warrior Andre Iguodala. Cline-Thomas, who has family ties to the city of Leeds, is now the club’s vice-president, but it’s not even his first stop. at the English football rodeo.
A year before joining 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the San Francisco NFL team of the same name, Cline-Thomas was part of a 15-person syndicate called Argyle Green that bought a 20% stake in Plymouth. Argyle for £4 million. After League One, Argyle was promoted to the Championship the following season, where they remain, thanks to completing one position and one point above Brady’s Birmingham in which they have just finished.
Cline-Thomas had to sell its Argyle shares; the story of this investment fits with many Pinto boxes.
The Argyle Green Group was formed through Michael Mincberg, a Florida-based real estate investor, and David, his brother, a sports lawyer. His ties to business and sports brought together Cline-Thomas, now more businessman than agent, and two European soccer lovers. players from the Florida-based National Hockey League team, Tampa Bay Lightning, Victor Hedman and Ondrej Palat.
Welcome, Victor ? #pafc pic. twitter. com/kpAtAK6WER
– Plymouth Argyle FC (@Argyle) August 2, 2022
Hedman, who is Swedish, and Palat, from the Czech Republic, can attend a game at Argyle’s Home Park in their hockey uniforms and still not be recognized, but they have won the NHL name twice and Hedman is one of the players. in the league. The best defenders of the last decade.
“I probably know more about football than I do about hockey,” Hedman told The Athletic in 2022, although he also admitted that he is a big fan of Manchester United.
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“You see all those billionaire owners,” he continued. Obviously it’s a smaller club, with less investment. But they played Chelsea last year and lost in extra time. They got to the high level and they did well. You have to compete with those teams.
“For someone who has a competitive advantage, it’s a lot of fun to watch those games. There are fewer games, so they’re bigger games, one per week, so the preparation is more special compared to NHL games, where teams play 82 regular-season games before two months of best-of-seven playoffs to beat the champions. )Football is a faith in England, so being a part of it will be a wonderful adventure.
It’s appealing that Hedman has addressed the subject of religion, as he would no doubt be told by many older and more experienced club owners, LeBron, Tom and the others, that making an investment in English football is the ultimate check on religion and that the rewards come with it.
GO FURTHER
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(Main photos: Getty Images)