Paul J. Davies, Columnist

It’s Not Just Man City. Financial Football Is Becoming More Prevalent

Multi-club ownership is becoming popular among investors and bringing big potential benefits — and pitfalls.

February 8, 2023 at 5:00 AM UTC

Paul J. Davies is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering banking and finance. Previously, he was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

Hassane Kamara of Watford FC is emblematic of multi-club financial engineering.
Photographer: Alex Livesey/Getty Images Europe

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Hassane Kamara is a high-octane defender at Watford FC in England. He was the club’s player of the year last season despite only joining in January 2022. He’s also emblematic of the financial engineering available to football clubs through the increasingly popular multi-club ownership model.

Watford was relegated from the Premier League last summer and Kamara was sold to Udinese of Italy for a profit of about £12 million ($14.4 million). That looked like a great trade — but even better was that Udinese, which is owned by the same Italian family that owns Watford, immediately loaned the player back.