The Billionaire Takeover of European Football
Florentino Perez and the Agnellis want football clubs to get a bigger share of the games’ value. You can see why they’re eager for change.
Unconditional love.
Photographer: Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images
Real Madrid President Florentino Perez and the billionaire Agnelli family are united by a frustration with the economics of European soccer. Their attempt to overhaul Europe’s top football league appears to be based on the principle that the top clubs should thrive commercially like the other businesses they oversee.
Both Perez’s and the Agnellis’ business acumen can only get them so far in football. Perez built up construction groups Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA and Hochtief AG through cleverly structured acquisitions that made a little equity go a long way. In 2017, he was the underdog challenging Atlantia SpA’s plan to buy Spanish toll-road operator Abertis outright with the backing of the billionaire Benetton family. Perez later succeeded in forcing the Italian infrastructure group to bring him in as a partner to thwart an auction.