PALACE FUSS OVER: UEFA RESPITE - FOR NOW
Woody Johnson (New York Jets Owner) agreeing to buy John Textor 45% stake in Crystal Palace for around £200m has provided a swift solution for UEFA even though their rules failed to cover one area ‘where an owner owns a majority stake of the business but only has minority influence on the voting rights.
Maybe UEFA owes John Textor a favour or maybe John Textor owes UEFA one. Textor needed to raise urgent funds to satisfy French football financial control body, Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (DNCG). Now all three can breath easy for the next 12 months
This problem will only get bigger and more complicated if UEFA fails to act now.
UEFA changed the competition structure in 2024 to allow MCO’s the opportunity to have one team in each competition, up until now UEFA have only found temporary solutions to when two teams qualify for the same competition. Now is the time to find a real solution.
Eleven Premier League club owners are also involved with the ownership of other European clubs that could potentially qualify for UEFA European cup competitions each year, and with the MCO landscape expanding every season the layers of complexity UEFA are having to navigate is becoming more complex due to the lack of foresight, direction and self interest.
UEFA Competitions 2025/26
48 teams have cemented their place in the group stages, 17 belong to a MCO Group which has a second or third club in Europe
A further 14 clubs that have qualified for the qualifying round also belong to an MCO that has ties to European clubs.
Deloitte Money League 2025
17 of top 30 clubs are now MCO’s
14 clubs have a second or third club in Europe
Two MCO groups own Two clubs within Deloitte Top 30
This number could expand further as the clubs below all belong to an MCO and have qualified for various qualifying rounds of European cup competitions
Champions League Qualifiers - MCO Groups
OGC Niece (Ineos)
Pafos (Total Sports Investment)
Europa League Qualifiers - MCO Groups
Braga (Portugal) - QSI
Hibernian (Scotland) - Black Knight Football Club
FC Lugano (Switzerland) - Joe Mansueto
FC Midtjylland (Denmark) - Heartland
PAOK (Greece) - Ivan Savvidis Group
Conference League Qualifiers - MCO Groups
Strasbourg (France) - BlueCo
Basaksehir (Turkey) - CFG - strong partnership
Sparta Praha (Czechia) - Daniel Klinisky
Lausanne Sport (Sui) - Ineos
Bronby (Denmark) - David Blitzer
Silkeborg (Denmark) - Trivela Group
NK Maribor (Slovenia) Acun Llicali
Santa Clara (Portugal) Bruno Vicentini Network
Hammarby IF (Sweden) Anschutz Entertainment Group
This is the third season in a row that premier league club owners are involved in negotiations with UEFA to finding a solution in allowing owners with multiple clubs to compete in the same European competition.
Summer of 2023
UEFA rules in 2023 did not consider clubs to be part of an MCO if the ownership stake in clubs was below 50.1%, in the case of Villa they only acquired 44% three months before UEFA request.
Aston Villa (England) & Vitória SC (Portugal) - V-Sports
Outcome: Villa reduced their stake from 44% to 29% on UEFA recommendation
Brighton (England) & Royale Union Saint-Gilloise (Belgium) - Tony Bloom
Outcome: Tony Bloom reduced his stake from 75% to 25% on UEFA recommendation
AC Milan and Toulouse FC (RedBird Capital)
Outcome: The owners agreed to a series of remedies which, to all intents and purposes, negated any of the network effect benefits of being a member of an MCO group. Key executives resigned from AC Milan and RedBird formed a new entity to look after Toulouse.
UEFA did not pick up that RedBird key executives sit on Liverpool owners FSG Board as RedBird own 11% of FSG, Liverpool & Toulouse and AC Milan & Liverpool have played against each other in the past few seasons.
Summer of 2024
Manchester City (England) & Girona (Spain) - CFG
Outcome: Girona was placed in UEFA new blind trust
Manchester United (England) & OGC Niece (France) - Ineos
Outcome: Niece was placed in UEFA new blind trust
Blind Trust: UEFA regulations (notably Article 5 of the competition regulations) prohibit any individual or entity from having “control or decisive influence” over more than one club in the same European competition, to avoid risks of collusion, anti-competitive behaviour, or compromised integrity. This led to the creation of the Blind Trust
Ownership Transfer: The common owner must transfer their shares in one of the clubs to an independent trustee through a blind trust structure, under UEFA’s supervision.
Loss of Control: The original owner relinquishes all oversight, control, and decision making power over the club placed in trust.
Board and Management: The trustee appoints new directors; all previous representatives of the original owner resign from the board.
Financial Separation: The club’s financial statements are de-consolidated from the owner’s holding company.
Operational Independence: There must be no sharing of governance, transfer targets, scouting data, or technical/commercial agreements between the clubs for the duration of the blind trust
Ironic: OGC placed in the Blind Trust this season has seen them qualify for the champions league qualifiers which gives UEFA Blind Trust model enhanced credibility.
Summer of 2025 Challenges for UEFA
Nottingham Forrest (England) & Olympiacos (Greece) - Marinakis Football Group
Outcome: Lot of wasted time transferring shares into a blind trust only for teh blind trust to be cancelled by end of season.
31st March Evangelos Marinakis placed his 80% Forrest stake into a blind trust, subsequently Forrest dropped to the conference league and Marinakis has taken Forrest out of the Blind trust. Marinakis will have one club in the Champions league and one club in the conference league 25/26.
Crystal Palace (Eng) & Lyon (Fra) - Eagle Football Group
Outcome: Still undecided
UEFA insisted that Palace owners place their shares in a blind trust by 31st March, 29th March Palace win their FA Cup QF, should a club really transfer ownership on a-potential cup run?
This rule needs rethinking as the majority of UEFA 55 leagues play their cup finals at the end of the season and the big leagues award a European place to the winners of their main cup.
John Textor has voiced his intent to sell his 45% stake and granted exclusivity to a Saudi / USA Group back in Feb/Mar. Links to the PIF initially caused PL headaches, subsequently three new consortiums have now registered their intent to acquire Textor stake and the Saudis have dropped out.
In its current form John Textor owns 45% and has 25% voting rights, David Blitzer owns 18% and has 25% voting rights, Joshua Harris owns 18% and has 25% voting rights and Steve Parrish own 10% and has 25% voting rights Under UEFA unofficial rules a threshold of under 30% which seems to have been set in 2023 aka Aston Villa and Brighton, in theory there should be no issue.
David Blitzer could increase his stake but he would then may have two clubs in UEFA competitions, Palace (Europa) but his otehr club Bronby have qualified for the Conference league qualifiers.
Drogheda United (Ire) and Silkeborg IF (Den) - Trivela Group
Outcome: Drogheda United kicked out of the Conference league
Trivela Group owns four clubs including Drogheda United - Ireland (100%) and Silkeborg IF - Denmark (80%) both qualified for the 2025-26 UEFA Conference League. Despite Drogheda's appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the decision was upheld, this ruling cost Drogheda at least €350,000 in UEFA prize money and marked their missed opportunity to return to European competition for the first time since 2013. Silkeborg retaining their Conference League place due to their higher league rankin.
UEFA defence the conference league is the lowest out of the three competitions and they could not promote one of these two clubs to Europa league.
Confusion:
From the outside how was RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg granted clearance to compete in the Champions league this season when on paper they may have separate ownership groups but the reality is they are still part of the RB brand and operate in collaboration with the other RB clubs
Further Complexity
Atletico Madrid, Chelsea and O’Lyon - Ares Management owns stakes in all clubs holding companies.
Ares Management acquired 33.96% in Atlético Madrid for $193.4m,
Invested £500m into Chelsea (MCO strategy / Acquisition of Strasbourg) and in return received Equity in 22 HoldCo Limited (listed on Ares Management Website), one of Chelsea many holding companies (Stake size Unknown).
Loaned £400m+ for Debt financing and equity into Eagle Football Holdings (Stake size unknown). Question how much influence does ARES have with clubs, Summer of 2024 saw significant transfer activity between Atletico Madrid, Chelsea and Atletico Madrid and Lyon.
Conclusion
BlueCo will have Chelsea in champions league and Strasbourg conference league. ARES will have Atletico Madrid and Chelsea both in the Champions League and Lyon in Europa league. Nothing will happen as UEFA will see ARES Management as a passive stake holder that holds no influence, despite evidence of some form of influence happening.
Are the current regulations effective
Article 5 is "too vague" creating uncertainty about what constitutes prohibited influence. The rule's ambiguity provides UEFA with flexibility in application but leaves clubs and investors unclear about compliance requirements.
Communication failures and arbitrary deadline enforcement lead to systemic problems. Sources indicate UEFA directly contacted some MCO groups about new March deadlines but not others, creating an uneven playing field. The rules weren't formally adopted until February 26, 2025, just two days before the new assessment deadline.
Concern centres on UEFA's limited capacity to effectively police its own regulations, UEFA has no way of knowing whether or not something else is happening behind the scenes when investigating compliance. If UEFA is not capable of policing its rule, does its existence make any sense.
UEFA and FIFA position has been complicated by the fact that powerful political allies in football are themselves part of an MCO group. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the chairman of Ligue 1 club Paris Saint-Germain, and president of ECA is also president of Qatar Sports Investments, which owns PSG and holds a 29.6% stake in Portuguese club Sporting Club de Braga. FIFA has also taken billions in current and future sponsorship money from PIF fund which itself owns multiple football clubs and is vying for an entry point to UEFA competitions for Saudi clubs.
Blind Trust rule creates its own problems, including loss of control, dependence on trustee competency, and significant setup costs, which for clubs competing in the Europa and Conference league (competition fees much lower when compared to champions league) can lead to a deficit of earnings across the competition. Creating temporary measures such as Blind Trusts are never going to control influence. The owner will still be funding the club, and in reality conversations will take place in the shadows.
Eastern Europe there is indirect evidence that Multi Club Ownership groups that operate in the lower tiers have been used to launder money and fix matches. But at present there has been no real high profile games too scrutinise and until one arises this issue will not be truly examined.
FIFA & UEFA face an unfixable problem because regulations were written at a time when MCO were rare and nobody had the foresight to see where this is going, in addition every single rule in football is based on clubs as separate entities while FIFA have never fully defined what a club is creating fundamental regulatory gaps.
The biggest reality is that football needs investment and the regulators cannot tighten the rules to much as this will deter investment, the current provision allowing MCOs one team in each competition should be the common ground for all owners, the next challenge for UEFA is ensuring the prior money in all three competitions are more evenly balanced.
Time for UEFA to analyse ownership structures properly and independently to make robust MCO rules for their competitions.