James Montague has brought out a new book called The Billionaires Club which is about ‘the unstoppable rise of football’s super-rich owners.’ I have only dipped into it to so far but he is a journalist and can tell a story well.
It starts with a chapter about Crewe Alexandria and finishes with one about Portsmouth. The main body of the book is about owners from Eastern Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.
James Montague has brought out a new book called The Billionaires Club which is about ‘the unstoppable rise of football’s super-rich owners.’ I have only dipped into it to so far but he is a journalist and can tell a story well.
It starts with a chapter about Crewe Alexandria and finishes with one about Portsmouth. The main body of the book is about owners from Eastern Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.
He talks about ‘a new breed of club owners, one that had been largely unseen in world football until the mid1990s with little or no local connections to the club they had bought who, at best, possessed hazy motives and even hazier pasts.’
There were big spenders in the 1990s such as Jack Walker at Blackburn Rovers, but what has changed is the scale of the resources need to compete, along with the internationalisation of the investors.
Montague writes that the book ‘is not really about the business of football, although it touches on it. Nor is it about the football business, as such. It is about the new Masters of the Universe that have made football their business.’
A Financial Times article about the book can be found here.