The former Manchester United footballer Gary Neville is to join the BBC show Dragons’ Den as a guest star in the upcoming series.
Neville, who played for England in the 1990s, will appear alongside the existing Dragons Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, Sara Davies and Steven Bartlett, to judge entrepreneurs and decide whether to invest in their businesses.
The 48-year-old, who won 85 England caps, has forged a successful business career in his own right and is estimated to have a net worth of nearly £20m.
Neville will appear as a guest on the panel alongside the fashion and retail entrepreneur Emma Grede. Filming is taking place in Manchester for series 21 of the programme, which is hosted by Evan Davis.
Neville said: “I am excited to join the Dragons, and to meet the entrepreneurs brave enough to face us in the den.
“I hope my personal journey shows that you can take the experiences you’ve had in one part of your career and use them to do something entirely different and make it a success.”
Neville joined Manchester United in 1991 and retired in 2011, making him the second longest serving player at the club after Ryan Giggs. He was part of what was known as the class of 92, a cohort of young players who went on to dominate English football.
Since retiring from football more than a decade ago after making 602 appearances for his boyhood club, he has become a popular television pundit for Sky Sports and made a number of high-profile investments in Greater Manchester.
Neville’s YouTube channel, The Overlap, in which he interviews friends and former colleagues earned £180,000 in profit last year. The show, featuring stars such as David Beckham, Tyson Fury and Harry Kane, has since turned into a live tour where Neville discusses football with his friends, the former footballers Jamie Carragher and Roy Keane.
He owns a portion of Salford City football club, which he bought in 2014 with his former Man United teammates Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville, his brother.
This group of players also founded a college, University Academy 92, in partnership with Lancaster University, focusing on sport, business and tech-related subjects, and they own the boutique Hotel Football in Old Trafford.
He founded his investment company Relentless – “my favourite word” – in 2015. It is described as “built on inspiration and innovation, supporting businesses from launch, through to scale”.
He has been a property developer since the age of 21, and the property arm of his company, Relentless Developments, is co-building a substantial development in Manchester consisting of two towers, nine and 40 storeys high, with a 191-room hotel, 181 flats, a rooftop restaurant seating 900, 185,000 sq ft of office space and a public park, St Michael’s Square.
Over the last two decades, Dragons’ Den has featured a number of entrepreneurs who have gone on to become huge success stories. In 2007, Levi Roots, the maker of Reggae Reggae sauce, was given £50,000 for a 40% stake in his business by Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh and has gone on to be worth an estimated £30m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Former Dragons and where they ended up
Duncan Bannatyne (2005-2015) – The health club magnate left to pursue other business interests after a decade as a Dragon.
Rachel Elnaugh (2005-2006) – Elnaugh left after two series when her business Red Letter Days went into administration and has since become a strident anti-vaxxer.
Doug Richard (2005-2006) – The American investor stepped down after the second series to run an investment company and in 2016 was found not guilty of child sexual abuse offences after having sex with a 13-year-old girl he said he believed to be 17.
Simon Woodroffe (2005) – Woodroffe, founder of YO! Sushi, stepped aside after one series criticising the show for being ego-driven.
Theo Paphitis (2005-2010) – The Greek-Cypriot British retailer was a popular face on the show and has since taken part in other BBC series including Question Time.
Richard Farleigh (2006-2007) – The Australian investor only lasted two series before he was replaced by James Caan and has become a prominent figure in the sport of chess.
James Caan (2007-2010) – Since leaving Dragons’ Den, the private equity investor became the chairman of the Start Up Loans Scheme, which provides government-backed loans to new businesses.
Kelly Hoppen (2013-2015) – Interior designer Hoppen has written a number of books and accepted a payout over phone hacking from the former News of the World owners.
Nick Jenkins (2016-2020) – Moonpig founder Jenkins was a high profile Tory donor in 2015 and since leaving the Den has continued to invest parts of his estimated £150m fortune in educational tech.
Tej Lalvani (2019-2021) – One of the wealthier Dragons with an estimated net worth of £390m, Lalvani left the Den to continue running Vitabiotics, which was started by his father Kartar Lalvani.
