What is Multi-Club Ownership? Regulations, Trends and Challenges

Image: “Etihad Stadium, Manchester City Football Club (Ank Kumar, Infosys) 16” by Ank Kumar, originally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Through the revolving doors of football business we encounter a lot of different acronyms and phrases that can be complex to work through.

One day, it’s PSR, SCR, and Anchoring, the next it’s the 50+1 rule and the types of shares football clubs list on the New York Stock Exchange.

Today, we’ve been presented with Multi-Club Ownership (MCO). 

This is defined by UEFA as “a situation where a party exerts control and/or decisive influence over more than one club,” and falls under the umbrella of multi-club investment, where the party/shareholder has investment in more than one club, but may not have the same control or influence in its activities as in an MCO group.

Both are fast-growing trends in modern football. As of 2022, there were around 82 top-division European clubs that were part of a multi-club investment structure encompassing over 6,500 players, according to a UEFA benchmarking report. 

Worldwide, the figure rose to over 180 clubs, marking an approximate 400% increase from ten years earlier in 2012.

The same report stated that a third of the 82 included American investors, making the USA the most prevalent country of origin for the shareholders that are part of a multi-club structure.

To fully understand the modern football business landscape, it is vital to understand multi-club ownership, and this article will investigate the history, regulations, and reasons why MCOs are becoming more popular, as well as the criticisms and expected future trends.

What are the Regulations Surrounding MCOs? A Brief History 

In the 1990s, Italian agriculture company Parmalat became a pioneer in the world of MCOs as they became majority shareholders in Serie A club Parma AC, while also taking over football operations of Brazilian giant Palmeiras.

Momentum then picked up, and in the late 1990s, English investment company ENIC acquired shares in football clubs around Europe including Tottenham Hotspur, Rangers, AEK Athens and FC Basel.

This led to UEFA introducing regulations that prohibited clubs competing in UEFA competitions from being able to “hold or deal in the securities or shares of any other club participating in a UEFA club competition,” according to Article 5 of UEFA’s regulations of the UEFA Champions League.

The rules also prohibit clubs from being involved in the management, administration, or sporting performance of any other club participating in a UEFA club competition, a rule mirrored by FIFA in Article 10 of their 2025 FIFA Club World Cup Regulations.

Regulations in the Premier League outline more of the same, stating: “No Person may either directly or indirectly be involved in or have any power to determine or influence the management or administration of more than one Club.”

The emphasis here on the ability of the shareholder to exert control over more than one club is vital, and is where the nuance to the regulations begins.

In 2023, UEFA released a statement outlining their acceptance of various clubs that are part of multi-club investment groups to compete in UEFA competition. This came after the clubs took various actions to comply with UEFA rules.

Some of these actions included the transfer of decision making or shares to an independent party or ‘blind fund’, having no representation on the board of directors, and accepting significant restrictions in the ability to provide financing to more than one club.

Essentially, a club, or shareholder, must prove that no one person is able to exert control or influence over multiple clubs in the same competition at the same time. These rules are under increased scrutiny and may be altered or relaxed in the future, with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin saying: “There’s more and more interest in multi-club ownership. We shouldn’t just say no…but rules have to be strict.”

Why Invest in Multiple Clubs?

As we established earlier in the article, multi-club ownership and multi-club investments differ, with the key separation being whether or not the shareholder has ‘control’. 

However, these terms are often grouped under the term ‘MCO’ because control is not the only reason why a shareholder would invest in a second, third or tenth club.

Not all MCOs operate identically, so the specific motivations for multi-club investment vary. However, there are some common driving factors that are worth considering.

One suggestion from the aforementioned UEFA report is that potential shareholders are “racing to invest in clubs that are perceived to be undervalued assets,” seeing a financial upside to investment across multiple clubs.

Another driver is the shared player pool. MCO groups often incorporate clubs within and across multiple continents, a notable example is the City Football Group, who have total or part ownership of 13 clubs in five continents, playing in a variety of different competitions. 

With global reach comes an opportunity for player recruitment and scouting. This is because clubs in MCO groups have direct links to other teams around the world, and of course their players. This means that as well as sharing scouting networks and databases, smaller clubs can have priority access to budding young talents leaving their parent club on loan, while larger clubs benefit from the first team players ready for the step up.

This was echoed by Todd Boehly, co-founder of consortium BlueCo who have stakes in Chelsea and RC Strasbourg. Speaking in 2022, Boehly said: “when you have 18, 19, 20-year-old superstars, you can loan them out to other clubs, but you put their development in someone else’s hands.

“Our goal is to make sure we can show pathways for our young superstars to get onto the Chelsea pitch while getting them real game time. To me, the way to do that is through another club somewhere in a really competitive league.”

In a 2025 study analysing the drivers behind multi-club ownership, it was found that MCOs are more inclined to utilise international markets in trading activity than single-ownership clubs, and improved sporting performance tends to come with this increase in international transfer activity.

A final reason shareholders may invest in multiple clubs is for commercial reasons. Operating as part of a worldwide, or at least multi-national network, clubs that are part of MCO groups have global brand exposure, gaining the opportunity to market each club to the fans of other clubs in the MCO group.

This is also appealing to sponsors, who can similarly be exposed to worldwide markets and supporter bases through one streamlined partnership deal. 

Challenges to the Multi-Club Ownership Model

To paint a full picture of the current discourse surrounding MCOs and their recent rise, we must also look at its criticisms.

A major one, put forward by UEFA in its 2022 benchmarking report is the topic of APTs. Associated Party Transactions is a topic we have covered before when explaining the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations, but in short these are transfer deals done between clubs under the same MCO.

According to a 2023 study on the dynamic of MCO groups, clubs part of MCOs are “more likely to engage in internal transfers, particularly involving loan deals and higher transfer fees for players within their network, even when accounting for characteristics like age and market value.”

The same is felt by UEFA, who caution that the growth of MCOs has the “potential to distort transfer activity,” adding: “[There is] an increasing percentage of transfers being executed within multi-club investment groups at prices that suit investors, rather than at fair values, to the detriment of trainer clubs.”

To combat this, the Premier League, as well as other sporting bodies, have introduced regulations to ensure deals reflect ‘Fair Market Value’.

A further criticism of MCO activity comes from some fans who feel that, while new owners can fund stadium redevelopment and allow for on-the-pitch investment, their club loses an element of freedom. 

Speaking to the BBC earlier this year, French football expert Jonathan Johnson explained: “There are financial benefits but the project’s narrative not being tightly controlled from day one creates a crisis of identity.

“No fan views their club as secondary in any project and a stand-alone approach is more palatable.”

The Future of Multi-Club Ownership

Overall, much of the debate surrounding multi-club investment now centres on its regulation and oversight from governing bodies rather than its long-term viability.

As MCOs become more popular, greater engagement between clubs and supporters’ groups is viewed as increasingly important if owners are to have the backing of the fans, and is vital considering the importance of fans to the sporting and commercial success of football clubs.

Awareness of models such as multi-club investment and MCOs is extremely important for those aspiring to careers in football business. 

To gain an even deeper understanding, our football business-related programmes are a great place to start, taught by experts in their field with global networks. To learn more, visit our course offerings page.

Article by Zakaria Anani