Why almost one-third of English Football League clubs are now American-owned

They are fast becoming ubiquitous across the English football pyramid.

American owners continue to arrive at every level — with Premier League club Everton the latest to be purchased by U.S. buyers last month when The Friedkin Group completed its takeover.

The Friedkins enter a region where the other major club, Liverpool, have been owned by two different sets of Americans for the past 17 years, and across the River Mersey, League Two Tranmere Rovers may soon be taken over by a New York investment group. But U.S. investment has not been reserved only for the English game’s big-name clubs in powerhouse regions such as Liverpool, Manchester, the Midlands or London.

It has found its way to the far flung outposts of the professional game — such as Carlisle United near the Scottish border, or relative minnows on the outside of crowded hubs, including Walsall in the Midlands, who exist in the shadow of three U.S. owned neighbours in Aston Villa, Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion.

Twenty-three of the 72 clubs (32 per cent) in the English Football League — the Championship, League One and League Two — now have American owners.

But as the domino-effect influx continues, the question remains of what attracts different types of investors from the States to such a varied roster of clubs. Many are rich in history but low on recent progress, yet supported by fans with high expectations.

The Athletic travelled to some of these towns and cities and spoke to the team’s owners and supporters in an effort to understand this trend…

It is a brisk October Tuesday evening in the West Midlands and, almost 90 minutes before kick-off, a black people carrier pulls up outside Walsall’s Poundland Bescot Stadium.

The smell of spices from a nearby jerk chicken stand greet the smattering of supporters making an early entrance, but most fans of this evening’s guests, Carlisle United, have yet to arrive.

Four of Carlisle’s VIPs, though, have just finished a more than three-hour, 185-mile drive to watch their team, which is nothing when you consider their ‘normal’ commute to watch Carlisle’s home games is 4,098 miles (almost 6,000km).

Long trips don’t faze Tom Piatak, the chairman, who strolls across the quiet concourse with his wife Patty and two of their children.

The Piataks’ family business is Castle Sports Group, which completed a takeover of Carlisle a little over a year ago. Although based in Jacksonville, northern Florida, they have spent the past 12 months becoming increasingly enmeshed in not just their new investment but the area’s wider community. It is why they have made this trip to watch as the club, at that time second from bottom in League Two, the fourth tier of the English game, face the division’s third-placed team — also an American-owned outfit.

A little later, a handful of people in the blue of Carlisle United also appear. Among them is Dave Noble, a lifelong fan and member of the club’s supporter trust.

“They have been a breath of fresh air,” he says of the Piatak family. “We had the same chairman and owner (Andrew Jenkins) for a long time, as long as I’ve followed them, and when he passed away in the summer, if Castle Sports Group hadn’t come in, the club could have died with him.

“The previous owners did their best to keep the club going but there wasn’t much progress. They (the Piataks) got in touch with the supporters’ trust early and asked to come and speak to us. We weren’t even sure it was legitimate. It was a bit like those scam emails when someone wants to give you a fortune.”

Noble says he was “looking for red flags” but his fears quickly dissolved.

“Tom spoke to us for an hour and a half about his vision,” he says. “He spoke without notes and it was very professional and sincere. We were mesmerised.

“We have had promises before when Michael Knighton (the former Manchester United board member who owned Carlisle from 1992 until 2002) invested and it never came to anything, so there’s always a bit of scepticism, but everything they’ve said they wanted to do, they have either done or started to.”

The Piataks have been busy. In the first year they have made significant improvements to Brunton Park, Carlisle’s home stadium, and surrounding facilities, and also to the training ground. But getting a winning formula on the pitch has not been easy.

In September, they parted company with manager Paul Simpson after three defeats in their first four league games, following on from relegation from League One last season. They have since appointed a new manager, Mike Williamson, and a sporting director, Rob Clarkson, but, having lost at Tranmere on Saturday, are bottom of the table and six points adrift of safety with the sides who finish 23rd and 24th dropping out of the EFL and into non-League football.

“They showed a lot of patience with Paul Simpson and kept him in the job when a lot of clubs would have fired him,” says Noble. “You will get some people who are critical of them (the owners) but I’m not one of them. I want them to be a success because then the club will have been too.”

Perhaps predictably, considering their current respective league positions (Walsall have since moved 10 points clear at the top of League Two), Carlisle’s evening ends miserably with a 3-1 defeat in front of a 4,939-strong crowd, most enjoying their own club’s transformation. Noble and his friends face a long journey home to Cumbria — at 8,699 miles, their total round-trip distance for the 23 away league fixtures this season is longer than the distance from Carlisle to Jacksonville and back.

As the final whistle approaches, Carlisle striker Luke Armstrong hits a speculative effort at the home goalkeeper, comfortably saved, and the travelling fans ironically chant, “We’ve had a shot.”

But for Tom Piatak, it is all still worth it because the man who built his fortune on a successful logistics firm tells The Athletic he is in this for the long haul.

But why Carlisle, a city of just over 100,000 people tucked away in the north-west corner of England, some 100 miles north of Manchester? “Those challenges are what drew us there,” he says. “The unique location is critical.”

Castle Sports’ takeover of Carlisle ended a 10-year search to get involved in professional sports. First. Piatak waited until the family business was ready, then searched for the right club: initially considering Jacksonville, where the JAXUSL ownership group holds the franchise licence for a team in United Soccer League (USL — the tier below Major League Soccer), and other clubs in England and Scotland which fitted into requirements on factors including the language barrier, travel and politics.

The Piataks are improving Brunton Park (MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

He was put off by the absence of promotion or relegation in U.S. soccer (“It’s very good for owners, I’m not sure it’s good for competition,” Piatak says) before Carlisle became the No 1 option.

“We wanted to be the biggest sports brand in the (local) market,” he says. “So when you think about that, it brought Carlisle straight up to the top. We wanted to own all their infrastructure, we didn’t want to be leasing anything, and we wanted a strong supporters’ group.

“It came down to four or five clubs we reached out to, and Carlisle was top of our lists. While it presents challenges because of location it presents tremendous strengths we think we can capitalise on.”

By “capitalise”, he clarifies he does not mean trying to make a quick buck. “The plan is that ROI (return on investment) for us as a family is not 30 per cent or something like that; it is basically elevating the club and community as a whole,” Piatak says.

“I want to make the club financially sustainable, which can be a challenge in English football. With the location we have, the right training facilities and catchment area, I believe we can do a player-trading model that can make the club sustainable.

“When we’re done, we want to make it a regional powerhouse of the north and not necessarily make a big return.”

Piatak recalls another important aspect of that meeting with Noble and company in 2023.

“When we took over, the supporters’ group owned 25.4 per cent of the club and we had to bring them down to 10 per cent, because we weren’t going to invest the equity where we didn’t have enough control,” he says. “So we had to present to them, and one of the things I said to them, in person and online, was that we love the fan support and it was one of our decision criteria. They did move down to 10 per cent which felt like an endorsement of who we are and our outline for progress.”

Piatak has learned that persuading new players to move to Carlisle is not as straightforward as for clubs in bigger, easier-to-reach UK cities. It led to him buying several houses and apartments which have been renovated to provide a high standard of accommodation for recruits — some of them right opposite Brunton Park.

After spending last Christmas in a Carlisle hotel, the family have now bought their own place around a mile from the ground.

“We love the fact the stadium is walkable and right in the city,” Piatak says. “It’s completely different — we don’t live in the city in Jacksonville.

“It’s a different vibe: being able to walk to the shops, see all the people and realise the club is such a dominant piece of the city. If we bought, let’s say, a smaller club down in London, or Manchester, or Liverpool, we could just walk about and be completely unknown. It’s definitely a plus.”

Piatak knows the hard work of the first 12 months would be sorely dented by relegation to the fifth-tier National League at season’s end next May. “It’s absolutely not going to happen,” he says.

In the summer he was dreaming of promotion this season, and while that looks near impossible, he does daydream about rising up through the divisions to at least the Championship.

But for this American investor, who counts countryman Bill Foley, owner of the Premier League’s Bournemouth, among his acquaintances, what does a commercially successful Carlisle United look like?

“Fifteen thousand supporters in the stadium, week after week,” Piatak says (Carlisle’s average attendance is around half of that this season). “That just energizes the club and community. It’s a benefit for Carlisle, and Cumbria as a whole, because you have so many people travelling in.

“We could give free tickets away and maybe get there sooner but it’s having 15,000 in there and then trying to be financially sustainable. If we can make one pound, that to me would be a success.”

Walsall’s performances on the pitch are having their owners and fans dreaming. They boast that double-figure lead at the top of League Two and their rookie manager Mat Sadler has a growing list of admirers.

Their American owners are doing things a little differently, but are just as open about the logic behind the plans.

The Trivela Group, based in Alabama, bought a controlling stake in Walsall in June 2022, and now owns three clubs after adding League of Ireland Premier Division outfit Drogheda United to a portfolio that included a team in the west African nation of Togo, Trivela FC. In November, it moved close to adding a fourth, after agreeing to acquire an 80 per cent share in Silkeborg of Denmark’s top-flight Superliga.

Ben Boycott is the managing director of Trivela Group and co-chairman at both Walsall and Drogheda.

“We are long-term-minded value investors,” Boycott says. “We think through our financial models and returns in decades as opposed to years, and we have a very strong bent towards legacy investing, that’s putting capital to work in a way that will create a long-term return, but will also matter and improve lives and communities along the way. Increasingly, we felt football investment is a way to accomplish both of those.”

Boycott, right, with Walsall co-chairman Leigh Pomlett (Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images)

Trivela Group is busy following its own path, but Boycott has been around football long enough to hear how other foreign investors think about buying into the English game.

“It’s a very dangerous investment if you are trying to be a quick-buck artist,” he says. “It’s dangerous culturally too, because you’re playing with something that really matters to a lot of people, and clubs get hurt that way. I don’t think that’s right.

“Time will prove whether we’re right or not, but I see a lot of stuff about the way a lot of Americans think about it. The entry point compared to sports club evaluations in the U.S. is lower. So people look and think, ‘That’s attainable’, then get stars in their eyes about the value created by promotion and say, ‘Well, that feels attainable’.

“There are projects where foreign investors, including Americans, look to acquire clubs, spend unsustainably on the player budget, get promoted, and flip (sell) the club for a higher value to cover all those significant losses and generate a return. If that’s what people want to try and do then fine, but it distorts the industry, and you’re taking huge risks not just financially, but with the hearts of the club and the community.

“Some groups have made some money in real estate in the U.S. and this is their ‘fun’ thing. Then you have what I’ll call a ‘professional investor’ category, but within that there are different types. Then you have other groups who are highly risk-tolerant and willing to chuck an enormous amount of money into the playing budget hoping for a sporting return.

“You end up with clubs being operated under very different mindsets with very different time horizons, and they all play against each other every Saturday.”

Walsall’s place in a congested Midlands football ecosystem that covers all four divisions may be small, but for Boycott having big clubs on your doorstep — Villa are in the Champions League this season — is not a bad thing.

“You can say there’s way too much competition but competition for what?” he says. “There are around 300,000 people living in Walsall. There is a supporter base in Walsall that is excellent, loyal and can grow and there is upside to that, evidenced by when we went to Wembley in 2015 (losing the EFL Trophy 2-0 to Bristol City) and took 30,000-plus.

“Not to say that we could fill a 35,000-stadium every other weekend, but we believe there is growth outside the fanbase but it hasn’t had that right level of investment yet. I’m comfortable with our support base and its potential. Being around those clubs is good for things like player loans. If you create those relationships properly, then they can really help us.”

There is a lot of good going on at Walsall. Next to their Poundland Bescot Stadium (the prefix stems from a sponsorship deal with the British budget-store chain) is a thriving supporters’ club and bar called The Locker. Once known as the Saddlers Club, after Walsall’s team nickname, it had been closed by previous owners and became derelict.

(Greg O’Keeffe/The Athletic)

“They changed the beer,” says Ken Brown, a season-ticket holder of 62 years, who was nine when he attended his first game. “I wasn’t too happy with that but they (Trivela) have been good custodians. They helped us out by getting our ground back for us. We own it now and that’s important.”

His pal Mick Evans agrees: “It’s still a proud community club. Liam Gordon (one of the Walsall players) came to visit me after I had my quadruple bypass. The owners seem to encourage that bond with the fans.”

In keeping with this desire to create positive change in the area, Trivela has bolstered the Walsall Foundation. “It’s a conduit for a lot of our partners to funnel capital to much-needed projects,” says Boycott. “We’ve done a lot of cool stuff in some local schools with really good outcomes.”

The community needs that support. In November 2023, Valerie Vaz, the Labour MP for Walsall South, said the town was 14th in England in terms of income deprivation affecting children and its 25th most deprived local authority area.

“We feel football is a powerful tool to do good,” says Boycott. “If done right, the opportunity in a community like Walsall can be very positive.”

(Greg O’Keeffe/The Athletic)

Boycott thinks one of the potential advantages to Walsall of being part of a wider group of clubs involves player pathways. So far, Drogheda have benefited most: Walsall loaned them striker Douglas James-Taylor for the season in the summer and his seven goals in the competition helped them lift the FAI Cup — the Republic of Ireland’s version of the FA Cup — in October.

“We have really started to ramp up our own branded club in Togo too,” says Boycott. “That’s a really interesting market. We’re increasing staffing levels and infrastructure and it’s a small seed that we’re just watering. I hope in four years’ time we’re saying it worked for that community in Togo, because we’re creating jobs, adding value to that area and to kids’ education.”

For now, Boycott is enjoying the ride of a potential promotion campaign, even if he admits his passion for the job has led to an emotionally charged start to his family weekends.

“My extended family are super-fans,” he says. “The aunts and uncles and parents are watching every game and buying the kits. My wife and daughter are into it too and love watching the games, but at the same time there’s that element where it’s the thing that makes Dad really quiet and pensive every Saturday morning.

“It’s that time when you’re meant to be relaxing and Dad is on edge — but that’s the football life, I guess.”

A 15-minute drive south from Walsall gets you to West Bromwich Albion’s home, The Hawthorns. The winter nights have drawn in by the time The Athletic is there in November for another meeting of two U.S.-owned teams in West Brom, who were taken over in February by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel, and Burnley — where U.S. group ALK Capital has been the majority shareholder since December 2020.

West Brom fans had their fingers burned by foreign ownership with Patel’s predecessor, the Chinese businessman Guochuan Lai. Under his stewardship, which started in summer 2016 when he bought out locally-born businessman Jeremy Peace, they twice lost their Premier League status and were dogged by off-field turmoil. Now they are having a more promising campaign in the second-tier Championship, nicely positioned in the play-off places that will decide the third and final club promoted to the 2025-26 Premier League at the season’s end.

Patel, though, now has to appoint his first head coach after the sudden departure of Carlos Corberan at Christmas. The Spanish manager returned to Valencia, where he started his playing career as a goalkeeper, after the La Liga club met the full buy-out clause in his contract.

It is the first time since Roy Hodgson was offered the England men’s job in April 2019 that West Brom have had to handle an approach for their manager and there was no experience of how to deal with such a situation. Given Valencia triggered Corberan’s release clause, however, in reality the club could not say no. Corberan, in a letter to fans on Christmas Day, said the decision had been “the hardest” of his life.

Former player Chris Brunt has been placed in interim charge as West Brom try to find Corberan’s successor with what one person at the club called a “modern-thinking” manager in mind. The process is being led by Andrew Nestor, named as West Brom’s sporting director in August, and assisted by Ian Pearce, head of football operations, although Patel will have the final say on the advice of those two.

Another consideration for the new American owner is walking the tightrope in the January transfer window to comply with the EFL’s financial fair play rules after the club suffered losses in the past two seasons. Profitability and sustainability rules in the Championship allow for losses of up to £39million over a three-year period. It has made recruitment difficult for West Brom, but Patel has started to pay back loans and balance the books.

A letter to fans in June suggested the “prudent and strategic decision-making” would continue.

Patel at The Hawthorns (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Season-ticket holder Keith Gardener likes what he has seen. “We look at how the previous owners were so negative for the club, taking money out rather than investing in it,” he says. “Clearly, this guy (Patel) and his PR department are very good at communication.

“One of the first things they did was tell people they knew about the problems but were committed to it as a family club and were going to give the manager support. That was very important, because we heard nothing from the previous owner but it was very positive and it remains so. Time will tell because he has only been the owner less than 12 months.”

Sporting director Nestor is also chief executive of West Brom’s parent company Bilkul Football Group and a former director of Italian Serie A side Bologna, which Gardener feels could be a further positive.

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“The performance of Bologna going from a struggling side to one that qualified for Europe (in the Champions League) was very promising,” says Gardener. “To say we’re similar to them is perhaps being a bit generous, but there are some similarities there and I feel there is a commitment from this owner.”

Gardener, who has season tickets with his son and grandson, has no problem with Patel seeking a return on his investment eventually, but only if it comes via the club’s regrowth and return to the top flight.

The Hawthorns has been without top-flight football since 2021 (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)

“They need West Brom to go into the Premier League to get a return on their investment,” he says. “Clearly there is an overriding problem with the financial fair play situation which Birmingham (City, where Americans have a controlling shareholding, and NFL legend Tom Brady is a minority investor) were able to sidestep because they’re down in League One so it doesn’t apply to them. They can almost build a top-flight team! But Patel knows what the restrictions are and, as much as possible, they will stretch the boundaries to spend what they can.”

Honours were even that night with Burnley, a 0-0 draw. But if any two of West Brom, Burnley and Sheffield United — who are third and behind Burnley only on goal difference now — can go up with current leaders Leeds United then the Premier League will retain its increasingly Stateside flavour. All four of those clubs are U.S.-owned. With Everton’s takeover before Christmas, more than half of the top flight sides now have at least one minority stakeholder from the across the pond.

West Brom and Burnley could be replaced in the second tier they hope to leave behind by another clutch of teams with owners from the other side of the Atlantic, including Wrexham, Birmingham and Huddersfield Town.

Whether it is the Premier League’s dazzling lights, climbing up the pyramid behind them, or preventing the unthinkable of dropping out of it, owners based in the U.S. are making the key decisions at so many clubs across the top four divisions of English football this season.

“I don’t think there’s scepticism over them anymore because they’re American businessmen,” says another West Brom season-ticket holder, Dan Pearson, as he leaves The Hawthorns after the Burnley match. “There is always a doubt at first with any new owner, but you have to trust them. I think they’re in it for the long game.”

Additional reporting: Steve Madeley

(Top photos: Getty Images)