From comic strip legend to French megastar: The rise of footballer-owners

• Two decades ago, footballer-club owners belonged only in the pages of comic books, like Roy of the Rovers. Today, top players like Kylian Mbappé and David Beckham are turning fiction into reality.
• As Mbappé purchases Caen, a growing trend emerges: leading footballers are not just stars on the pitch but increasingly power players off it. But what do they hope to gain from club ownership?
• Why it matters: This growing trend of footballers buying clubs could redefine the sport as players seek to instil their own sporting vision off the pitch, but it also brings potential risks and challenges.
• The perspective: Is buying a football club a sound investment for a player? “There’s a saying - ‘How do you make a small fortune with a football club? You start with a large one.’”

By James Corbett , senior correspondent

In 2001, in the closing act of the legendary comic strip, Roy of the Rovers, the eponymous hero, Roy Race, wrested ownership of his beloved Melchester Rovers, from the unscrupulous Vinter Brothers. It closed the circle on a 47 year-long story that had seen Roy progress from Melchester’s prodigy, to on pitch hero, to manager, and finally to owner.

At the time, the idea may have seemed as unlikely as some of Roy of the Rovers’ other plotlines (these included a terrorist attack on the team, an amputation following a helicopter crash and assassination attempts), but a story born in the comic book age, is today increasingly being played out in the real world.

Top footballers are increasingly leveraging their wealth and influence to carve out new post-playing roles for themselves within the football industry.

Notable examples include David Beckham’s Inter Miami CF in Major League Soccer , Zlatan Ibrahimovi?’s stake in Hammarby Fotboll in Sweden, Ronaldo’s ownership of Real Valladolid Club de Fútbol in Spain and Cruzeiro in Brazil, and former Manchester United players buying Salford City FC in 2014.

Reduce debt

This summer the trend took on a different dynamic when an active player took on an ownership role. Kylian Mbappé made headlines not only for his performances at the Euros and his much-anticipated move to Real Madrid, but also for his purchase of Stade Malherbe Caen , a Ligue 2 club.

The takeover saw Mbappé take an 80 per cent stake and included substantial financial contributions to reduce the club’s debt. His involvement has already started to influence the club’s operations. Caen has bolstered its squad this summer by signing seasoned players like former French international Yann M’Vila and midfielder Lorenzo Rajot.

While it is too early to measure the full impact of Mbappé's ownership, the moves made so far suggest that his influence is already being felt on and off the pitch.

But what does the deal represent? How will the growing involvement of high-profile footballers – past and present – as owners affect the dynamics within clubs?

Will their presence as owners lead to better player recruitment and talent development, or could it create pressure and unrealistic expectations within the team? Are these investments driven by passion for the game or by financial motives? Is it money, ultimately, well spent?

Norman underachievers

Founded in 1913, Caen spent much of their early history in the regional leagues, not turning professional until 1985. There have been spells in Ligue 1 – their best ever finish was fifth in 1992, which brought them European football – and reached the League Cup final in 2005 but have played in France's second tier since 2019.

The club, nevertheless, has a good record in youth development. William Gallas and N’Golo Kanté are notable alumni, and a 13 year-old Mbappé came close to signing before ultimately being lured to Monaco.

Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. , along with the film producer Pierre-Antoine Capton, acquired the club in September 2020, investing a total of €15 to €20 million. Over the past three years, they spearheaded a restructuring process, leveraging one of France’s top-performing academies to help offset operating losses.

No figure has been released officially for Mbappé’s acquisition of the club, but French media has put the sale price at €15-€20 million – or around what Capton and Oaktree paid.

Nor has Mbappé commented on the transaction, but the club described it in a statement as “a significant step in the club’s strategic development” and that it would provide Caen with “additional strategic resources to strengthen its sporting policy, modernize its infrastructure and develop innovative projects.”

Mbappé’s close friend Ziad Hammoud, who will take over as chairman of the club, said in a statement that the new owners “are determined to create an environment where young talent can flourish and where the club can defend its identity with strength and ambition.”

Small change

For years French football has been riven with financial chaos due to mismanagement over broadcast deals and handling of the pandemic. An outlier in all this has been Mbappe. The full extent of his earnings at PSG has become clear in recent weeks after an extraordinary dispute broke out between the player and his former club.

The legal claim would suggest that his salary package on the two year contract he signed in May 2022, including signing on fee and “ethical bonus”, was worth €190 million annually. His previous contract, agreed in 2017 and leaked via Football Leaks, paid him a basic salary of €50 million.

In short, Mbappé could afford to not just offset Caen’s annual losses but pay its entire annual revenues out of his own pocket with his playing earnings from a single month. If the club were to ever turn a profit – and it has not managed to do so in many years – it would only ever be small change to a 25-year-old who is honing in on billionaire status.

Yet Caen is a solid strategic investment. The club, located within a couple of hours of Mbappe’s native Paris, has a loyal fan base, solid infrastructure, good stadium and the potential for growth. With the right management and investment, it could be promoted to Ligue 1, increasing its value and providing Mbappé with the option to sell at a profit. Ronaldo, for example, did just that when he turned a $39 million profit on Cruzeiro, which he sold for $117 million in April.

But is there something more going on? Many of the crop of footballer-owners talk about using their projects as a way of instilling their footballing vision on a club. When Manchester United’s ‘Class of ‘92’ bought Salford City ten years ago, Ryan Giggs spoke about how the consortium wanted “to engage the football community, use our football experience and knowledge to aspire and nurture young talent.”

Robbie Savage bought Macclesfield Town to use the club as a vehicle to share his ideas about free grassroots football to a wider audience. Didier Drogba says he bought into Phoenix Rising to give young players the support he didn’t receive himself early in his own career.

Long term vision

The former German international midfielder and VfB Stuttgart CEO, Thomas Hitzlsperger (Hitz the Hammer) , is one of the generation of footballers turned club owners, using a club they have invested in to implement their own ideas about football. He was part of a consortium that invested in Denmark’s AaB A/S last year and completed a majority takeover earlier this year.

Hitzlsperger says his entry into this role was driven by a deep love for football and a commitment to developing the sport, rather than a desire for financial gain – indeed he describes the word “investor” as having “a really negative connotation” in his native Germany.

Through a connection with Bernard Peters, a former technical director at Hamburger SV and Hoffenheim, Hitzlsperger was introduced to a consortium looking to revitalize AaB, a club that had been struggling in recent years.

Investment, he says, was only part of what was being sought – the club wanted also long-term strategic direction, and Hitzlsperger saw it as a place to test his own ideas.

“We thought ‘We’re not the usual football investors, we love football and we have a plan of what we want to do’ which is primarily based on talent development,” he says.

“But in German football sometimes it’s not easy with a strategy that’s long-term because there's always somebody above you and then you can't execute a strategy because if you lose two or three games on a trot, they become nervous and listen to their own advisors or spend too much time reading negative articles instead of believing in the process they once signed off.

“So, we started looking into it and we thought ‘Well, if a club likes our strategy, they offer us the chance to buy shares in a club, let's go for it’.

Hitzlsperger and his co-investors looked at the infrastructure, they met the local shareholders and started to raise money after they had invested some of their own. The consortium initially raised €2 million for a minority stake early last year. This was increased to a majority stake last spring.

The road hasn’t always been smooth – AaB were relegated months after the initial investment, a sorry demise for a club that had competed in the Champions League playoffs as recently as 2014 – but the belief in bigger core footballing ideas not only nourished the investors’ interest but saw them increase it. Top flight status was regained at the end of last season.

“Everything that I heard there sounds so familiar to what I heard of Stuttgart and what you hear at other big clubs: ‘We used to be a big club, we used to be successful, but we've lost our roots, our core – the academy, talent development’,” he says.

As well as bringing on pitch success, what his consortium “wants to achieve” is integrating young players from their own academy and elsewhere in Scandinavia into the AaB team. Their “core business”, he says, is “talent development”.

“Now it’s delivering the strategy that we presented.”

Sound investment?

Having knowledge and experience through playing the game is one thing, but should a footballer be looking into putting their wealth into a football club investment? Is it a good or prudent investment?

Patrick Foley - Financial Planner for Footballers ?? formerly worked for Coutts Bank in their sports division, where he managed footballer clients. He is now managing director of Sonar Financial Services, which primarily provides financial planning for footballers.

Foley describes the company as a “sort of family office for footballers” and says the assumptions he makes in terms of mapping out a footballer’s financial journey are “being realistic, prudent and cautious.”

“It’s about getting rich slowly,” he tells Off The Pitch. “Players want the penthouse but not necessarily the foundations.” He sees it as his task to get them there.

Typically players first come to him in their late teens when “they have the contract but not the assets”. He’ll seek to build those up, typically with a mixture of property and investments for themselves and their families.

By their mid-20s, if they’ve been successful and “have a pot”, then he’ll start to look at different types of investments.

“But the nature of these investments will be vanilla and straightforward he says. “Passive investment funds and so on.”

So, not a football club, then?

“There’s a saying - ‘How do you make a small fortune with a football club? You start with a large one.’

“There are far easier and safer ways to make an investment than a football club. Players will see for themselves what a merry go round it is, and how expensive it is to move managers, players, or their coaching staff on, when things aren’t going well.”

Different stratosphere

Kylian Mbappé is, of course, not just a footballer. At 25, he has become a global brand and a business mogul. His recent investment in Caen is only one part of a much larger strategy that highlights his place in a different stratosphere of footballers in terms of wealth and business acumen.

Mbappé’s wealth is staggering, even by the standards of elite footballers. A portion of his off-pitch earnings are managed through a company called KEWJF, established in 2017 and named after his family members (Kylian, Ethan, Wilfried, Jires, and Fayza).

KEWJF has seen its revenues rise steadily, with a turnover of €12.2 million in 2021, and Forbes estimated that this figure reached $20 million in 2022. This financial growth reflects Mbappé’s ability to leverage his on-field success into lucrative commercial ventures, making him one of the highest-earning athletes globally.

High-profile partnerships

But Mbappé’s financial empire extends far beyond KEWJF. In 2022, he founded Zebra Valley, a production company based in Los Angeles, signalling an ambition to make a mark in the entertainment industry.

Zebra Valley is not just a side project; it’s a well-funded venture with high-profile partnerships, including a multiyear content creation deal with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and another significant agreement with Skydance Sports, the sports content division of Skydance, a media and film production company owned by Larry Ellison’s family.

Mbappé’s ventures are interconnected in ways that enhance his brand while also contributing to his financial future. Zebra Valley, for example, is in production on a documentary about Mbappé, to be distributed on Netflix, further boosting his global profile.

Moreover, Mbappé’s financial strategy is closely tied to his personal journey. That he nearly joined Caen as a youngster before signing with Monaco adds a personal dimension to his acquisition of the club. It suggests that Mbappé’s investments are not just about financial returns.

Looking forward, Mbappé’s involvement in Caen could even see him take to the pitch for the club, much like Didier Drogba did when he joined Phoenix Rising FC, the club he co-owns, at the end of his career in 2017.

Such a move would further blur the lines between Mbappé the player and Mbappé the businessman, solidifying his position as a trailblazer. Or maybe, a decade or more in the future, it would simply bring a Roy of the Rovers finale to a career that has had everything.

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