Is football becoming into soccer? The U.S. Investors in the Premier League and the European Football.

Last week the UK government approved the sale of Chelsea FC to a group led by Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly for around $5.3 billion, the biggest price ever paid for a sports franchise. Chelsea will join Stan Kroenke’s Arsenal, the Glazer family’s Manchester United and Fenway Sports Group’s Liverpool in the growing roster of Premier League clubs backed by American billionaire investors. All four owners have also bought leading U.S. sports franchises.

Next season, with this movement, 11 out of 20 Premier League teams will have owners or investors from the United States; 8 of them are owners or have a share majority.

Here is a look at the Americans who currently own shares in Premier League clubs.

Owners or majority owners: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester United.

Ownership groups involve investors from the U.S. with a minority stake: Leeds United, Manchester City, West Ham and Wolverhampton.

The Premier League has long been a focus of interest for foreign investment; Russian oligarchs, Gulf nations, and Chinese billionaires have regularly bought into European football clubs over the last 20 years. But more recently American private equity firms have seen a lucrative opportunity.

This trend is also observed in other European Leagues: AC Milan, Atalanta, Parma, Fiorentina, and AS Roma of the Italian Serie A, as well as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseille of the French Ligue 1, are also wholly or partially owned by Americans. The list is more extensive if we include teams from lower divisions in the main European leagues or if we consider minor league clubs. Another example, in May, CVC invested 1.5 billion euros in League 1, or 15% of the shares, with the confidence to make a profit from it.

Given the growth of the Premier League and its global audience and TV revenue streams, the clubs have grown to be more appealing to U.S.-based owners over the past decade. Several of these investors have recognized an opportunity to take over clubs with passionate fan bases, not just local but on a global scale, renowned brands and untapped potential, applying American sports learning to the club operations.

These owners are believed to have seen the opportunity to invest in what has traditionally been viewed as an undervalued sporting market, which can be grown and flipped for profit. This new breed comes from the middle class of American investors, shut out by the stratospheric valuations of American major league sports teams (an average of $3.5 billion for NFL teams, $2.4 billion for NBA teams, and $2.2 billion for MLB teams) yet affluent enough to buy a European team and inject capital into it.

Another reason, thirty years ago, all of the European soccer combined generated less revenue than any one of the MLB, NFL, or NBA. Now, European soccer produces more cash than all three of those combined, almost doubling its revenue within a single decade, to 28.9 billion euros in the 2018-19 season.

Nonetheless, other reasons have led to this tendency. For instance, UEFA’s ongoing effort to make clubs act more responsibly with their finances also played a role, according to global accounting firm KPMG. In a recent report, this effort has “aligned the European football leagues more closely to the less volatile, and more business-driven, American sports leagues.”

Some fans are worried about the sports culture difference; it is believed that European owners don’t anticipate a profit, while U.S. owners expect one. This could take to the loss of some of the English and European football traditions. The best example was the European Super League creation attempt in April 2021 that contained all the possible elements against the culture and tradition of European football. However, it seems the trend is not going to change soon. Apparently, the only rivals to the Americans are Middle Eastern bidders.

It will be interesting to have a close look at what will happen with this “soccerization” of European football.