Eight of the top 10 Premier League clubs are now owned by Americans. So are a third of all clubs across the four divisions of the English Football League. With the 2026 World Cup arriving on American soil this summer, U.S. investors have already conquered a different kind of field — Britain’s Premier League and the English football pyramid below it.
As we approach what sportswriters over there refer to as “the business end” of the 2025-2026 season, eight of the 10 clubs in the top half of the Premier League table are owned by Americans. Below them, in the English Football League’s “Championship” (as the pyramid’s second division is confusingly called), four of the eight clubs battling for promotion to the Premier League are U.S.-owned (including the feel-good Ryan Reynolds-Rob McElhenney Wrexham project and its Tom Brady-backed TV documentary rival, Birmingham City). And three of the top eight clubs in the division below them, League One (still confusing, I know), boast American owners. Overall, a majority of Premier League clubs are now in American hands, as are a third of the clubs in the three divisions below that comprise the English Football League.
