Famous people have always aligned themselves with football clubs – the only difference now is that some of these celebrities are actually helping write the cheques, rather than the age-old celebrity racket of being comped tickets.
Will Ferrell, with his newly-acquired minority stake in Leeds United, is the latest Hollywood star after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to invest in our game and their presence in English football naturally creates headlines and generates clicks.
We’ve also seen sports stars – from LeBron James at Liverpool to Tom Brady at Birmingham – investing as the game goes ever more global.
When I was owner at Crystal Palace we had the likes of Liam Neeson, Eddie Izzard, Bill Nighy, Ronnie Corbett and Jo Brand supporting the team at Selhurst Park. None of them made an offer to invest in the club mind you.
Although there was a suggestion at one point that Colonel Gaddafi’s son was interested – as was Puff Daddy, or whatever name he goes by these days.
Hollywood star Will Ferrell has bought a minority stake in Leeds United
Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have taken Wrexham from the National League to League One after taking ownership of the Welsh club
But Tom Brady’s investment at Birmingham City had the reverse Midas effect as they suffered relegation from the Championship
Ferrell’s investment is further proof that sport is now undeniably part of the entertainment industry.
There’s plenty of crossover as we’ve seen with the All or Nothing series on Amazon and Formula One’s Drive to Survive generating huge interest as well as Welcome to Wrexham.
All these perceived insights from behind closed doors have lent themselves to entertainment so it’s no surprise that the entertainment business has got involved.
I remember someone from Graham Norton‘s production company once suggesting I buy another football club so they could make a documentary about it.
What, because I didn’t lose enough money with the first one? To coin a phrase from Joe Pesci’s Goodfellas character Tommy DeVito: ‘I’m here to amuse you?’
But this is football now. It’s not now simply the precinct of the rattle-swinging, scarf-waving, comes-from-the-town supporter or owner, it’s now global with huge media interest attached.
The media makes money from sport and sport makes money from the media so now the entertainment world looks at sport as a business opportunity.
The Premier League – and English football – is not only hugely successful but it also has the history and heritage so it’s no surprise that well-known and well-recognised people want to be involved in it.
News of Ferrell’s investment emerged on the day Leeds missed out on automatic promotion
Brady’s Birmingham City suffered relegation from the Championship down into League One
I don’t really see it as anything sinister or concerning. As long as the identity of the football club is preserved, then having celebrity fans like Ferrell who wish to invest is surely a positive.
In this day and age of digital content, famous football fans or investors help with engagement and recognisability so if Ferrell is running around America as a Leeds shareholder, the club will, as proven by Wrexham, be more visible. That can’t be a bad thing.
Culturally, it also tells you just how popular football, as entertainment, has become.
Football is the modern day rock and roll. It’s front page, back page, everywhere. Football has become a very different business. The empty stadiums of the 1980s, dilapidated buildings and significant hooliganism are all long gone.
It’s glamorous and exciting so no wonder glamorous people want their piece of the action.
My only sadness is that everything in Great Britain seems to be for sale. It appears that the only people who don’t really fancy investing in these valuable community assets like football clubs are British people.
Like every development in this country, someone else has to come along and fund it.
We create so many things but because of the risk or scale of finances in this country, we always seem to be selling things off to foreign investment.
NBA superstar LeBron James takes a stroll around Anfield in 2011 after investing in Liverpool
We tried to offload the stock exchange to the Germans a couple of years ago for crying out loud. Can you imagine that happening with the New York stock exchange?
Culturally we often seem to be a risk-averse nation. We are very innovative and forward thinking, yet it seems to be other people that fund the financial gap and thus take ownership of the idea.
We give the game to the world and everyone gets better at it, whether it’s cricket, tennis, golf or football. There must be something behind the fact that we give the world all these sports and they all evolve while we don’t.
It’s therefore no real surprise that whilst having all these wonderful opportunities and innovations – the latest being the Premier League – it often appears that everyone else gets the benefit of it and extracts whatever they want from it.
So, is celebrity and foreign investment in our game a good thing?
Well, it depends. If we lose our central values of what our football culture in this country looks like as a result of globalisation, then that can’t be a good thing.
Our central values made the product so acceptable, so marketable, so interesting and so investable. Lose those things and all of a sudden different agendas are at play.
Rob McElhenney (left) joined Wrexham’s wild League One promotion party in Las Vegas
Wrexham finished second in League Two this season to secure back-to-back promotions
For example, American owners view relegation as a problem which goes against everything our wonderful pyramid is built upon.
If you lose the cultural relevance and reason for English football by allowing it to be owned by everybody else from around the world with different values – celebrities or not – then you ultimately undermine the sport and its outcomes and you’ll take it in a different direction.
So while there are undeniable benefits to the huge economics in our game, the flipside is that the landscape could change as a result.
We’re not far away now from every Premier League club being in foreign-owned hands. How many overseas owners – whether nation states, hedge funds or Hollywood stars – do we need before we erode the common fabric of a football club?
Ultimately, I just want to see good owners running our football clubs so it doesn’t matter, to some extent, where they are from if they are good.
I’m not a nationalist and don’t believe in British is best but if you’ve got a product that is clearly working for other people to invest in it, you have to ask the question why it isn’t working for us.
The appeal of the Premier League around the globe is obvious and everyone wants a slice
We must find a balance in this globalised world. We must stick to the central principles of what English football was in the first place – competitivity, physicality, tribalism, relegation and a sense of community and innate belonging.
All those things define our game. You lose those, you lose the essence of what our game is.
And if you allow that core proposition to be overshadowed by a regime of overseas investment with a different vantage point and different motivations then you end up unwinding it.
That’s where you need strong leadership and, as I’ve written before, I am not convinced we have it.
Moyes victim of the ‘what have you done for me lately?’ brigade
David Moyes has done a sterling job at West Ham but he has become a casualty of the sport’s entertainment business.
People want to be entertained and West Hams fans weren’t feeling it despite David delivering successful league finishes and a nice little European competition but it’s like the old expression in life and sport: What have you done for me lately?
What he’s done lately is deliver solidity, stability and the removal of the risk of relegation. But evidently that is not appealing.
West Ham fans clearly want something that looks more ambitious and exciting, something that will get them out of their seats.
David Moyes, who will leave West Ham after this season, has become a casualty of the sport’s entertainment business
David hasn’t helped himself at times but I don’t think he’s been treated grubbily, I think it’s just run its course. Nothing lasts forever.
David has successfully moved on from Sociedad and Sunderland where his reputation was diminished to some extent and has gone back to being a highly capable football manager who operates at a very high level.
The narrative at West Ham has moved on from how disenfranchised the fans feel to be playing at an athletics stadium to the fact that David hasn’t produced an exciting team.
You’re never going to square that circle, especially at West Ham where there have been many casualties over the years for the crime of not playing the style of football the fans think they deserve.
Whether or not Julen Lopetegui is an upgrade, only time will tell but we saw what a wonderful job he did at Wolves because Gary O’Neil went in and did a better one.
Julen Lopetegui, formerly of Wolves, is poised to return to the Premier League with West Ham
Zero need to take Premier League games abroad
Taking Premier League games abroad has been back in the news recently but I see no commercial reason or necessity to do it.
I do see a game of significance being played in America or the Middle East at some stage but, currently, there is no pressing need.
It’s different for the Italians and Spanish who are billions of pounds behind the Premier League so I understand their desire to cash in.
Richard Masters talks about the door being left ajar, but that’s because the Americans have opened that door and want him to walk through it.
That doesn’t mean you’re desperately sprinting towards the door yourself.
