Nearly a decade has passed since a Wall Streeter afforded us a glimpse of a prospectus trying to tempt wealthy Americans into purchasing West Bromwich Albion.
Then in the top flight, WBA seemed in rude good health, boasting £21m in cash reserves, pretax profits of £13m, and a stadium where 75 per cent of seats were filled by season ticket holders.
Asking £170m and courting high-net-worth individuals capable of taking the Baggies to the next level, here, went the sales pitch, was “an incredible and almost unique opportunity to acquire a profitable, turnkey football club in the world’s most watched and commercial football league”.
The last bit is truer now than it was then so it was no surprise when last week Tom Brady became the latest American athlete to buy into English football. While the exact size of his stake in Birmingham City is not yet known, his arrival adds to the growing sense the game is now considered a must-have fashionable accoutrement among the super-rich. Like having a private jet before that became standard. A sort of 21st century equivalent of getting in on the ground floor of a dotcom start-up during the bubble.
Except, as Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have proven at Wrexham, this comes with considerably more street cred and reams of positive media coverage.
All of this may explain why so many multimillionaires seem desperate to add to their stock portfolios clubs from parts of England they probably never heard of before. JJ Watt, another superannuated NFL icon, has taken a piece of Burnley, Leeds United now counts Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Russell Westbrook among its ownership consortium, while Michael B. Jordan, best known for playing Adonis Creed in the recent Rocky movies, bought a little chunk of AFC Bournemouth.
“And maybe you’re asking what do you know about English football, Tom?” said Brady in an announcement video where he donned the Birmingham City jersey.
“Well, let’s just say I’ve got a lot to learn. But I do know a few things about winning and I think they may translate pretty well. I know success starts with the work put in when the world isn’t watching. I know a team is nothing without the city that shows up and stands behind it. Most importantly, I know I like being the underdog. The road’s been long for Birmingham but these fans have never stopped believing. I’ll see you at St Andrew’s soon.”
While a cynic might wonder if somebody had to explain to the avid golfer that this particular St Andrew’s is more than an apostrophe away from the Old Course up in Scotland, Brady will now sit on an advisory board where it is hoped he won’t just evangelise about his devotion to junk science.
Remember, this is a character who believes if you drink enough filtered water you can’t be sunburned, a quarterback nonpareil who slept in $200 recovery pyjamas lined with something called “far infrared”. At the very least, we can probably expect him to ban tomatoes, which he famously swore off in his quest for longevity, from the City canteen.
Perhaps Brady will replicate Watt’s more holistic approach to educating himself about Burnley. Before their last Championship game back in May, the former Houston Texan defensive end embarked on a pub crawl around Turf Moor, a 6ft 5ins, 21-stone behemoth sipping pints of Guinness and chatting to the locals.
The Wrexham owners have offered a feel-good template to all on how to endear yourself to the natives, but Watt isn’t coming from a place of complete ignorance either. Kealia, his wife and co-investor, is a former American soccer international who briefly played for Vera Pauw during the latter’s controversial stint at the Houston Dash of the NWSL.
Having banked more than their predecessors, this generation of pro athletes has realised owning teams rather than coaching or managing them is where the real power and money lies. Before discovering Birmingham, Brady purchased minority stakes in the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA and the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders.
Why the other football though? Well, in the 12 years since LeBron James bought 2 per cent of Liverpool, an investment since parlayed into a chunk of Fenway Sports Group, NBC has made the English game glamorous and conveniently available, broadcasting every match. Watt has told the story of having two televisions blaring in his house on Saturday mornings, one tuned to the Premier League, the other to college gridiron.
Hip as the game has become, interest is piqued too by this newfangled thing representing an obvious opportunity to make money. Given that the rights to start a Major League Soccer team in San Diego just went for a ludicrous $500m, there’s still much better value to be had buying into the lower English leagues, especially with promotion (that most un-American concept) offering potentially massive financial windfalls.
Still, the Birmingham City faithful probably shouldn’t get carried away just yet. Brady lost $30m via the doomed FTX cryptocurrency last year, and Autograph, a company he established to help athletes sell NFTs to fans, recently laid off one-third of its employees and is in dire trouble.
Every ad hawking investments over here comes with ominous warnings that past performance is no guarantee of future success, stocks can go up as well as down.
Long-suffering Blues supporters already know that too well.
