Traditional football clubs are increasingly being folded into international, multi-layered conglomerates that manage portfolios of teams across continents. This is a profound shift: it is changing not only ownership structures, but also the mechanics of the transfer market, sporting strategy and the commercialisation of club brands. Whether modern football undergoes a full-scale business revolution — with multi-club ownership, or MCO, as its emblem — will depend not only on the sporting and commercial performance of such groups, but also on the success of their attempts to access public markets.

One of the most intriguing examples of this transformation is Eagle Football Holdings, the group led by John Textor, which last month announced plans for an initial public offering in New York. Under such structures, sporting achievements — a Brazilian league title won at the Maracanã, an FA Cup triumph at Wembley, or qualification for European competition in Lyon — become components of a global business strategy rather than merely local sporting milestones. The MCO model is redefining what a football club is, turning it into part of a broader international network built around synergies, scale and innovation in sports management.

The question of football’s future development model is no small matter. The global football market exceeded $3.4bn in 2024 and is forecast to grow to almost $4.7bn by 2033, driven not only by transfers but also by technology, sponsorship and the rising value of sport as one of the very few categories of media content — alongside news — that must still be consumed live.

MCO is therefore not merely a business innovation. It is also a challenge for regulators, supporters and clubs themselves, all of which must navigate a new reality in which the boundaries between the local and the global are blurring faster than ever. More than 300 football clubs worldwide now operate within such structures, with England, France and Italy leading Europe in the number of clubs involved in MCO arrangements.

In England, clubs operating within MCO structures include Manchester City, through City Football Group, and Leeds United, through 49ers Enterprises. In Italy, examples include Palermo FC, also part of City Football Group, AC Milan under RedBird Capital Partners, AS Roma under the Friedkin Group and Brera FC under Brera Holdings. In France, the best-known MCO-controlled club is Olympique Lyonnais, owned by John Textor — and the subject of this article.

The roots of MCO lie in the globalisation of football, the arrival of foreign investors and the growing commercialisation of the sport. A turning point came with Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea in 2003, which opened a new era in English football. Abramovich did not create an MCO in the strict sense — he controlled only one club, even if he also sponsored teams in Russia — but the move revealed the direction in which professional football was heading. The takeover of Manchester City by Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008 then demonstrated how investment by sovereign wealth funds could transform not only the fortunes of a club, but also those of entire cities and regions. Today, City Football Group manages nine clubs on four continents, while Red Bull owns six teams, from Salzburg to Brazil’s Bragança Paulista and New York.

MCO is no longer the preserve of the richest leagues. In recent years, the model has spread to South America, Asia and Africa, as well as to the lower tiers of European football. In Poland, GKS Tychy, currently playing in the second tier, is part of an MCO structure. In 2023, Brera Holdings, with a portfolio of six clubs on three continents, became the first MCO company to list on Nasdaq, showing that football can be managed like a global investment holding company. Although Brera’s portfolio does not include any club from the game’s elite — alongside Italy’s Brera Calcio, it includes teams from Macedonia, Mozambique and even Mongolia — its listing marked another step in football’s globalisation.

In theory, MCO offers a wide range of advantages: transfer-market synergies, easier player movement between affiliated clubs, shared scouting and youth development, cost optimisation, business-risk diversification and the ability to build global brands. Eagle Football Holdings, for example, has boasted that co-operation between Lyon, Botafogo and Molenbeek helped increase revenues by 26 per cent, 225 per cent and as much as 643 per cent, respectively, in the first quarter of the 2023/24 season.

The effects of MCO membership have also become a subject of academic research. A paper by Christoph Breuer and Tommy Quanash, published in March in the European Sport Management Quarterly, suggests that clubs belonging to MCO structures make greater use of intra-network loans and achieve higher transfer fees — evidence that the promised synergies may indeed be real.

Moreover, a study published in May 2025 by Raffaele Trequattrini and others found that governance in MCO clubs is more transparent than in clubs outside such structures. This appears to reflect the fact that MCO groups are often linked to investment funds, which tend to demand greater transparency. Clubs within MCO structures are also subject to closer scrutiny by sporting authorities, the media and supporters themselves.

Researchers have also examined the impact of MCO on sporting performance. Here, the findings are less clear-cut. Tommy Quanash, Markus Lang and Bernd Frick found that MCO membership does not have an unambiguous effect on results. Much depends on the structure of the organisation itself. Improvements were observed in vertically integrated MCOs — those that control clubs operating at different competitive levels. In such cases, the “lower” clubs serve as talent pools for the “higher” clubs within the same group.

The available research also points to legal and ethical controversies surrounding MCO, including potential conflicts of interest and the temptation of anti-competitive behaviour. It is for precisely this reason that UEFA and national federations are increasingly required to determine whether a single owner exercises “decisive influence” over more than one club in the same competition. Such questions have already produced high-profile disputes and forced ownership changes, as seen in the case of Crystal Palace and Eagle Football Holdings.

John Textor is an unusual figure: a former skateboarder and digital-media entrepreneur who set out to build his own football empire. In just a few years, Textor has assembled, under the Eagle Football Holdings banner, clubs in France, Brazil, Belgium and England — Olympique Lyonnais, Botafogo, RWD Molenbeek and, until 2025, Crystal Palace — as well as academies and football projects in Florida and Rio de Janeiro.

Yet the biggest test for EFH came with Crystal Palace. When the south London club won the FA Cup and qualified for the Europa League, UEFA opened proceedings over a potential conflict of interest, as Olympique Lyonnais — also owned by Eagle Football — had qualified for the same competition. Textor ultimately had to sell his stake in Palace to Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, to allow both clubs to participate in European competition.

The decision to take Eagle Football Holdings public was a logical next step in the group’s development. For EFH, an IPO is intended to provide access to the permanent capital that a public listing can offer, supporting further expansion, technology development and additional acquisitions. A listing would allow the group to raise funds, increase scale and reduce its dependence on short-term football results. In June 2025, EFH filed for an IPO in the United States, with the group potentially valued at up to $2bn. That would make it a global leader in this emerging category, far ahead of Brera, which is a much smaller and less recognisable undertaking. As part of its preparations for the listing, EFH announced a $1.1bn recapitalisation plan, including the issuance of new shares and debt refinancing.

This would be the first stock-market debut of a major MCO group, although individual clubs have previously tested the public markets in London, Milan and Amsterdam. The key question, however, is whether listing on a stock exchange actually improves the sporting and financial condition of football clubs.

Empirical studies suggest that the effects of football IPOs are far from straightforward. On the one hand, a listing allows clubs to raise capital, increase prestige, and impose greater financial transparency and risk management. On the other, most research indicates that IPOs do not translate into what supporters, players, coaches and executives care about most: sustained improvement on the pitch.

A 2011 article by D. Baur and C. McKeating in the International Journal of Sport Finance found that the effect of a stock-market debut on sporting performance depends primarily on the level at which a club competes. Positive effects were observed among clubs in lower divisions, while for most clubs the impact was statistically insignificant. The authors nevertheless suggested that, over the long term, a listing may improve the quality of club management by strengthening financial discipline.

The hypothesis of a positive relationship between stock-market listing and financial performance was also supported by R. Wilson, D. Plumley and G. Ramchandani in a 2013 article in Sport, Business and Management. Using data from English Premier League clubs, the researchers showed that listed clubs tended to be in better financial condition than unlisted ones.

Modern football is no longer merely a game played on the pitch. It is also a contest fought in global capital markets, in investors’ boardrooms and on streaming platforms. MCO is becoming a new standard. According to the latest data, more than 300 clubs worldwide now operate within such structures, and the number is rising each year. England, Italy and Spain remain leaders, but more and more clubs in South America, Asia and Africa are seeking investors willing to finance their development and the globalisation of their brands.

The future of MCO will depend on several factors. First, on the effectiveness of UEFA and national federation regulation, which must strike a balance between protecting the integrity of competitions and remaining open to capital. Second, on the ability of owners and managers to govern complex ownership structures while preserving club identity. Third, on their capacity for innovation, both sporting and technological.

John Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings is now one of the most closely watched projects in world football. Its success or failure may help determine whether MCO becomes the dominant model of 21st-century football, or remains the province of a handful of ambitious investors. If Eagle Football Holdings’ IPO and subsequent market performance prove successful, a genuine boom in this form of ownership may follow. If the project falters, the opposite could happen, with more traditional ownership structures returning to favour. One thing is certain: the eyes of football executives and supporters alike will soon be fixed not only on the pitch, but also on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.