Ownership stakes in competing Champions League teams could be permitted as part of changes being explored by UEFA.
Liverpool and Manchester United have been the subject of sale talk in recent months, the former focused instead on partial investment while the latter could soon change hands with interest from both Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, the head of Qatar International Bank, and British billionaire and INEOS founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of French side Nice.
Links to the Qatari ownership Paris Saint-Germain, as well as Ratcliffe’s controlling stake, in Nice have been raised during the sale process for United. Current UEFA rules forbid one entity having a controlling interest in two competing Champions League clubs at present, with Red Bull having to go to great lengths to separate Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig, two clubs they own, when both qualified for European football’s elite knockout club competition at the same time.
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Salzburg had to remove Red Bull-linked employees and end a co-operation deal that was in place with Leipzig, while the sponsorship agreement Salzburg had with Red Bull was amended to reduce the rights granted and amount paid by the energy drinks manufacturer. It was then decided by UEFA that Red Bull did not have a ‘decisive influence’ over both teams and that they could face off in the 2017/18 Champions League campaign.
Some individuals and funds linked with the purchase of an equity stake in Liverpool have also had a controlling interest of another major European asset within their portfolio.
RedBird Capital Partners, 11 per cent partners in Reds owners Fenway Sports Group, acquired a controlling interest in Italian giants AC Milan last year. Taking a significant stake in Liverpool would prove almost impossible under current rules, although the New York-based fund is understood to not be pursuing any such move in relation to the Anfield outfit's current investment process.
Other names linked with the purchase of a stake in the Reds include US billionaire Stephen Pagliuca, the owner of the Boston Celtics NBA team. Pagliuca, who would not be drawn on any potential interest in a Liverpool or Manchester United stake when he was quizzed about it at the Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit earlier this month, has a controlling interest in Italian side Atalanta, a club that faced off with Liverpool in the Champions League as recently as 2020.
With multi-club ownership becoming increasingly prevalent across European football as ownership groups look to make the most of the synergies that exist across leagues, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin says that a change to the current rules forbidding two teams facing each other in the Champions League that have the same owner could be explored.
He told The Overlap with Gary Neville, via The Times: “We are not thinking about Manchester United only. We’ve had five or six owners of clubs who want to buy another club. We have to see what to do.
“The options are that it stays like that or that we allow them to play in the same competition. I’m not sure yet.
“We have to speak about these regulations and see what to do about it. There is more and more interest in this multi-club ownership. We shouldn’t just say no for the investments for multi-club ownership, but we have to see what kind of rules we set in that case, because the rules have to be strict.”
“From one point of view it’s true if you are the owner of two clubs and they play in the same competition you can say to one club to lose because you want the other to win,” Ceferin added. “But for you, as a football player, do you think it’s so easy to do that, to tell a coach, lose the match because the other wants to win?”
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