OPINION - Football fans can still have their say in this billionaires’ arms race

As American billionaire Todd Boehly, part owner of the LA Dodgers baseball team, buys Chelsea, cast your mind back to the absurd situation of a few weeks ago. The club was in limbo, operating at the Government’s grace and favour. Merchandise wasn’t allowed to be sold. An English Premier League club was effectively under Government control because of a vicious conflict thousands of miles away. How on earth had this happened? 

The answer can be found in English football’s financial revolution. Since it was formed 30 years ago, the English Premier League has become the richest, most popular and arguably the best football league in the world. And in 2003, Roman Abramovich’s arrival at Chelsea sparked a new era. He didn’t want to make a profit or balance the books. He flooded the game with cash to turn Chelsea into one of Europe’s most successful teams. 

It sparked a kind of billionaires’ arms race. American billionaires moved in next, the Glazers at Manchester United, Hicks and Gillett — and then John W Henry — at Liverpool and Stan Kroenke at Arsenal. They rightly concluded that English football was only at the start of its economic boom. They had cut their teeth in US sports franchise ownership, where promotion and relegation didn’t exist, wages were tightly controlled and owners were all powerful. By bringing US business nous to English football, revenues and profits could be exponentially increased.

And then in 2008 came the next revolution with the arrival of Sheikh Mansour, the deputy prime minister of the UAE, at Manchester City. Now a club was connected to a state with almost unlimited money and power. It laid the foundations for another state entity, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund the PIF, chaired by crown