Amanda Staveley, Newcastle United’s Co-Owner, has shared her thoughts on multi-club ownership at the the Bloomberg Power Players’ summit in Saudi Arabia.
During her speech in Jeddah, she openly expressed her admiration for Manchester City‘s multi-club model, which involves partnerships with 13 clubs spanning across various countries including France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, China, Japan, Australia, India, America, Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia.
When asked if Newcatle would ever adopt a similar approach, Staveley said: “Multi-club is part of football. It’s a real benefit to be able to have players and train players that aren’t part of your squad.
“The UEFA rules are changing so we have to see what emerges. The dynamics around whether we could have a club has changed dramatically over the last year.
“I’m still a very big fan of the multi-club model. A lot of other competitors and friends in the Premier League have multi-club relationships, but it has to be considered as a whole.”
As mentioned above, Manchester City are the most renowned for the amount of clubs that they hold partial ownership of. Most notably, City Football Group (CFG) acquired 44.3% of La Liga club Girona FC in 2017.
Since the acquisition, Girona have gone from strength to strength, currently holding second place in the top flight of the Spanish league, ahead of Barcelona. One major benefit of clubs pursuing this model is academy reach.
In this model, City has academies all over the world, therefore its reach is much greater than other teams, which is also a driving force for Newcastle looking to pursue this model.
Staveley added: “We have looked at Belgium, we have looked at a lot of European markets. We have looked in Asia, Australia, Brazil – pretty much everywhere.
“We have looked at every market to see and getting players through our academy system and through that multi-club model would be very helpful in terms of allowing us to buy and have players part of our journey earlier on.”
However, the multi-club ownership concept has its critics. This is due to the model being used craftily to deceive Financial Fair Play (FFP). Deception in this model is usually carried out in transfers of players.
In an instance that a club needs a new player due to illness or injury, however, the club has already spent too much money and any extra cost could see the club penalised due to FFP, a club like City could approach another in its network and transfer one of its players.
While Newcastle already maintains connections with Saudi football clubs through its ownership, should the Premier League club decide to pursue a similar model as Manchester City, it could raise additional concerns from the FA regarding fairness and equity.
