John Textor’s football empire: ‘It’s not the Wall Street devil we’re talking about’

John Textor was hailed as a saviour when he bought Brazilian soccer group Botafogo past yr. “I go down to Rio and I’m treated like a king almost everywhere I go,” he explained of his early times in demand.

But after marketing a participant in January to Olympique Lyonnais, also owned by Textor’s Eagle Football, enthusiasts felt betrayed and the US businessman started off acquiring loss of life threats.

“Off just one participant offer I had to improve my cellphone variety,” he mentioned. “You would not believe how quick and how reactive points can be.”

A relative newcomer to soccer, Textor is one of a new breed of club entrepreneurs trying to find to get into teams across different leagues. The multiclub design is the hottest development in the sport, with much more than 180 teams now part of a broader network, in accordance to football’s European governing system Uefa.

Alongside Lyon and Botafogo, Eagle owns Belgian tier-two crew RWD Molenbeek and about 40 for every cent of south London Leading League facet Crystal Palace. After enlisting a amount of Wall Street backers, the corporation designs to float in the US in a initial for the business.

Textor’s track record is not sport but digital fact and visual outcomes — his past small business ventures incorporate bringing rapper Tupac Shakur back to lifetime as a hologram. The 57-calendar year-old stresses that even now he is not an “investor”, preferring to monthly bill himself as a “builder of companies”.

“There’s no far more offensive phrase in the English language than ‘investor’ to me, because that just claims your well worth and your contribution can only be calculated in revenue,” he informed the Monetary Situations.

Textor has however joined forces with a range of financiers. At Crystal Palace he sits on a four-man board with Apollo co-founder Josh Harris and Blackstone govt David Blitzer, along with club chair Steve Parish.

US financial investment group Ares delivered about €400mn of funding for the Lyon takeover and now has two board seats at Eagle. The $100mn fairness portion of the offer arrived from Jamie Dinan, founder of hedge fund York Money, and Alexander Knaster, the founder of Pamplona Cash who applied to run the now sanctions-hit Russian loan company Alfa-Financial institution, as a result of their firm Iconic Sporting activities Administration, together with tech-centered fund Elmwood Partners. Dinan and Knaster sit on the Eagle board.

Making young players — a approach Textor calls “asset creation” — is the thread functioning by Eagle’s golf equipment. Textor’s dollars aided total the new academy at Crystal Palace, based mostly in 1 of the world’s most successful cities for youthful talent, although Molenbeek and Botafogo are properly positioned to locate players in Brussels and Rio de Janeiro, respectively.

Participant buying and selling can be rewarding. Portugal’s Benfica, in which Textor at the time tried using to invest in a stake, has offered players well worth €840mn in the past five years, in accordance to Transfermarkt, at a trading earnings of €480mn, the best in Europe. Lyon ranks 3rd, making €272mn in excess of the exact time period.

But Textor’s approach is considerably from distinctive. There are now extra than 70 multiclub possession groups in football, in accordance to Deloitte, a lot of of them constructed on the similar thesis of intelligent scouting and participant trading.

Ares, which raised $3.7bn very last year for a sport and amusement fund, saw the option in Eagle to be part of a “pre-wired, multiclub strategy of some great clubs with a fantastic platform”, according to associate Mark Affolter.

Dependent on 2021-22 accounts, the blended earnings of Eagle’s assets would rank it in the prime 20 of the sport’s richest clubs — just driving Italian champions AC Milan, acquired by US traders past year for €1.2bn.

“There’s a large amount additional very low-hanging fruit in European soccer,” said Dinan, who is also a co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball staff and has joined the Lyon board. “I love the assets John has.” 

As section of the Lyon deal, Eagle place agreements in area for a possible merger with Legendary Sports activities Acquisition Company, a New York-detailed blank-cheque company sponsored by Dinan and Knaster and managed by London-primarily based boutique advisory Tifosy. A prosperous listing would make it the first multiclub football company to go general public, with a tentative valuation of $1.2bn, according to SEC filings.

Textor sees general public marketplaces as an antidote to the wealthy states and folks who regulate lots of of football’s best clubs. “It’s not the Wall St satan we’re conversing about,” he mentioned. “It’s a form of ownership which carefully approximates local community ownership.”

Nonetheless, Textor’s business record and deficiency of practical experience in activity have raised some issues. He was concerned in the 2006 buyout of Electronic Domain, turning out to be chief executive of the output household accountable for the sinking of the Titanic in James Cameron’s Oscar-profitable 1997 film.

A calendar year after listing on the New York Stock Trade, the organization ran into fiscal trouble and slid into personal bankruptcy in late 2012. Although Textor blames this on unscrupulous hedge money, some others at the time pointed to his aggressive expansion system.

His wealth inevitably returned. In 2020, Textor merged 1 of his businesses with fuboTV, a US athletics streamer aiming to be the “Netflix of soccer”, turning out to be executive chair and the greatest shareholder. He exited 6 months later on in the midst of a stock market rally that would give the enterprise a peak industry capitalisation of $8bn. The share value has because tumbled and it is now truly worth much less than $400mn. 

Textor ascribes his reinvention as a football entrepreneur to the darkish times of previous failures. Just after the collapse of Digital Domain, he shed his fortune and his “fake good friends vanished”. He uncovered solace coaching a kids’ soccer staff in Florida, and became a football obsessive.

“I was driving the bus, I was executing the laundry for uniforms in amongst video games,” he mentioned. “I’m not making an attempt to make this sound like a sob story — but it is what it is. I feel this soccer matter variety of saved me.” 

The obtain of Lyon, by much Textor’s most important go in football, has captivated two typical criticisms from rivals and traders — that he paid and borrowed too a lot. The €800mn price tag, like the club’s approximately €315mn in debt, was agreed in June final yr when desire premiums had been even now low and established a history in French soccer by some margin.

Lyon, the dominant pressure in France’s Ligue 1 in the early 2000s, has not received the league because 2008. The staff at the moment sits ninth in the desk.

Textor explained “only an idiot” would consider he overpaid. He pointed out that the personal debt — structured as most well-liked fairness — was secured towards his shares in the firm, not club assets, and that he desired Eagle to be personal debt-totally free inside two years.

In the brief time period, the focus is on constructing the organization by choosing a main executive and other senior administration for its London headquarters.

Yet enthusiasts across the 4 golf equipment have expressed unease. After an FT report on the listing plans, Crystal Palace supporters held up banners at a video game denouncing “stock sector gambling”, when Lyon followers have complained that the paying out promised through the takeover has not materialised. Even at superior-flying Molenbeek, some lovers have complained that the club is shedding its Belgian id.

Textor understands the scepticism, but urges tolerance.

“It’s simple for individuals to say Individuals are terrible, multiclub is lousy,” he mentioned. “I get it — followers never know me and they really don’t know my heart. They assume I’m a revenue person.”