The race to buy Sheffield Wednesday - Why football is no longer a millionaire's game

Many years ago, my old friend the late Milan Mandarić offered what sounded like a joke but was really a warning.

“The best way to become a millionaire from football,” he said, “is to start as a billionaire and buy a football club.”

At the time it raised a laugh. Milan was not joking. He was explaining the entry price.

Football ownership was not always this brutal. Before the Premier League era, successful local business people could buy their childhood club and run it as custodians. Bert McGee at Sheffield Wednesday. John Hassall at Sheffield United. David Sheepshanks at Ipswich Town. These were owners whose wealth would look modest today, but it matched the scale of the game.

That world ended in the early 1990s. The Premier League changed football’s economics entirely. Television money exploded. Wages followed. Infrastructure costs rose sharply. Clubs stopped being things you could own outright and became entities you had to continuously finance.

Stadiums were rebuilt after Hillsborough and the Taylor Report. Clubs professionalised. Fans became customers. Football shifted from local institution to global product. Ownership followed. Today, clubs are owned by private equity firms, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and multi-club groups. Football has become an asset class, optimised, leveraged and globalised... This is where geography becomes destiny.

There is only one billionaire in South Yorkshire. There are none in Sheffield. Across the whole of Yorkshire, there are just three. That is not a political argument. It is a structural constraint. The region that powered Britain’s industrial revolution now lacks the concentrated wealth required to own its football clubs.

Owning a club like Sheffield Wednesday is not about being rich. It is about asset composition, liquidity and infrastructure risk. A realistic total commitment sits between £100 and £150 million. That includes the purchase price, stabilisation cash, squad investment, wage uplift, operating losses and infrastructure.

Hillsborough carries decades of deferred maintenance. Safety systems. Stands. Concourses. Compliance. These are not cosmetic improvements. They are regulatory, unavoidable and expensive. Tens of millions can be required before a single pound is spent on revenue generation. The training ground tells the same story. Sports science. Recovery. Analysis. Academy pathways. Upgrading is not optional. It is the cost of remaining competitive. This is why liquidity matters more than headline net worth.

Any credible owner needs 30 to 40 per cent of the total commitment available in cash on day one. Not property. Not shares. Cash. That means £30 to £60 million immediately accessible to absorb shocks. A bad season. A failed transfer window. A regulatory demand. An infrastructure project that cannot be delayed.

Most people worth £100 million do not have that. Typically, only 5 to 10 per cent of their net worth is liquid. Five per cent of £100 million is £5 million. That does not modernise a stadium, rebuild a training ground and survive a relegation fight. Even £300 million is not enough if most of it is tied up. At 10 per cent liquidity, that is £30 million. Enough to begin. Not enough to endure.

This is why serious football owners are usually worth five to ten times what they commit. A £1 billion balance sheet provides resilience. It allows infrastructure to be funded quietly, losses to be absorbed patiently and mistakes to be corrected without panic.

Modern football punishes thin margins. Wages are fixed. Revenues are volatile. Infrastructure does not wait. Which is why ownership increasingly comes from institutions and sovereign wealth funds. Their capital is deep. Their liquidity is patient. Their objectives extend beyond Saturday afternoon.

For everyone else, football ownership has become a dangerous illusion. Being wealthy is not enough. Being local is not enough. Being passionate counts for nothing when the infrastructure bill arrives... Milan Mandarić understood that before most did. His joke was not really a joke at all. It was a statement of economic fact.

The era of the local millionaire owner is over. Football now belongs to those who can afford to lose sums most people will never earn.

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Written by David Richards MBE. David is a British technology entrepreneur and investor, co-founder of Yorkshire AI Labs, with a track record spanning global company building, AI venture scaling, multiple IPOs, public service, philanthropy, and media commentary, recognised with an MBE and honorary doctorates for services to technology, entrepreneurship, and young people.