Eight of the top 10 Premier League clubs are now owned by Americans. So are a third of all clubs across the four divisions of the English Football League. With the 2026 World Cup arriving on American soil this summer, U.S. investors have already conquered a different kind of field — Britain’s Premier League and the English football pyramid below it.

As we approach what sportswriters over there refer to as “the business end” of the 2025-2026 season, eight of the 10 clubs in the top half of the Premier League table are owned by Americans. Below them, in the English Football League’s “Championship” (as the pyramid’s second division is confusingly called), four of the eight clubs battling for promotion to the Premier League are U.S.-owned (including the feel-good Ryan Reynolds-Rob McElhenney Wrexham project and its Tom Brady-backed TV documentary rival, Birmingham City). And three of the top eight clubs in the division below them, League One (still confusing, I know), boast American owners. Overall, a majority of Premier League clubs are now in American hands, as are a third of the clubs in the three divisions below that comprise the English Football League.

It wasn’t long ago that one of America’s most cherished sports was bashing the world’s sport. Soccer was derided as staid and boring, when it wasn’t being characterized as a plot to alter our way of life, to be rejected by red-blooded Americans with the same vehemence we’d rejected such other foreign abominations as the metric system, Socialism, and Esperanto.

But today, European football, the English varietal in particular, is all the rage among our investing classes. What changed?

The Promotion/Relegation Bet

Well, it turns out the structure and culture of global football is the perfect fit for Wall Street’s animal spirits, offering a far higher-stakes competitive jolt than any American sport ever could to those addicted to competitive speculation and the pursuit of greater financial upside. Americans used to scoff at the existence of ties in soccer, and the lack of playoffs in most of its leagues, as evidence of a “wimp factor” in the game most associated with participation trophies among America’s youth.

But then America’s capitalists discovered the sport’s system of promotion and relegation (glaringly absent in America’s domestic soccer league), which offers clubs the possibility of moving up and down the game’s various divisions. This promises investors dramatic upside, or the jeopardy of existential implosion, depending on their results on the field. Moneyball reigns supreme in a world where sporting performance has a direct correlation with a club’s financial performance. Win enough, get promoted, your income and valuation soars exponentially (as Wrexham has experienced the last few years). Lose enough, get relegated to a lower division, and you’ll be forced to lay off staff and take a write-down on your investment as your revenues drastically shrink. Not for the faint-hearted, but catnip for that certain type who’s made a fortune by outsmarting competing hedge fund managers or private equity firms. And a certain catnip not available in American sports that lack this immediate correlation between financial and sporting performance.

By contrast, American pro leagues are structured to protect their owners from exactly this kind of jeopardy. The NFL shares revenue equally, enforces a salary cap, and hands the worst team the top draft pick — socialism in shoulder pads. NBA owners have perfected “tanking,” deliberately losing seasons to improve draft position.

Finish last in the Social Darwinism of a European football league, and you’re banished to a lower division of the game. If the Cleveland Browns were an English football team, they’d be playing in a Sunday pub league at this point.

Why Valuations Stay Low — For Now

European football’s volatility and jeopardy are also attractive to American investors because they hold down valuations. Only the handful of relegation-proof Premier League clubs have anything approximating US sport franchise valuations, because everyone else’s value could evaporate as a result of a bad season or two. Tom Foley, who also owns the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, acquired Bournemouth in the Premier League after being surprised he could do so for less than the cost of acquiring a new MLS team. That’s because baked into Bournemouth’s valuation is an assumption that the relatively small club isn’t going to be in the Premier League for the long haul.

Another attraction to American investors is the English game’s financial chaos, itself exacerbated by the speculative frenzy and dire stakes inherent in promotion/relegation. A study released in January by the accounting firm BDO claimed that 90% of all football clubs in England’s top four divisions lose money. Again, more catnip for private equity turnaround artists and American financial ingenuity.

The Intangibles

Then there are the intangibles, the seductive addictiveness of just how meaningful English football is, both to each club’s community and to the entire planet. Talk to any American invested over there, and they will breathlessly describe to you how the intensity of fans’ passion, the depth of clubs’ local roots, and the game’s global reach are like nothing to be found in US sports.

So, all in all, what’s not to like? Losing over there might be exponentially more brutal than losing over here, true, but the friendly invaders pouring into Britain don’t see themselves as capable of losing.

Andrés Martinez is Arizona State Cronkite School of Journalism Professor & author of The Great Game: A Tale of Two Footballs and America’s Quest to Conquer Global Sport (April 2; Bloomsbury).

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