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When Malcolm Glazer completed his takeover of Manchester United in 2005, he became the first American ever to own a Premier League club.
Twenty years on, he looks less like an outlier than an opening act. Heading into the 2025-26 season, thirteen of the league’s twenty clubs carried at least some American money on their share registers, and around half were majority-controlled by US individuals, families or private equity groups. The world’s richest football league has quietly become one of the most coveted assets in American sport.
That surge of cross-Atlantic capital has reshaped far more than the boardroom. It has fed a vast commercial machine around every fixture — broadcasting, sponsorship and the tightly regulated betting market that now sits alongside the UK game, where supporters comparing licensed bookmakers can find out more through comparison sites such as Betiton. For business observers, though, the sharper question is why so much American money has landed on English football in the first place — and what Britain’s new football regulator intends to do about it.
The rise of American owners in the Premier League
The trajectory is stark. Before the Glazers, the English top flight had never had an American owner; today US investors are spread the length of the table. Stan Kroenke, whose sprawling empire also takes in NFL, NBA and NHL franchises, controls Arsenal. Fenway Sports Group, led by John Henry, owns Liverpool. Aston Villa’s V Sports vehicle is co-led by the American financier Wes Edens. And the pace has quickened sharply in recent years: Todd Boehly’s consortium bought Chelsea for £4.25bn in 2022, Bill Foley’s Black Knight group took full control of Bournemouth later that year, and Dan Friedkin — already the owner of Roma — completed a takeover of Everton in 2024, moving the club into a new riverside stadium for this season. Most of those thirteen American stakes have been built since 2008.
Why US investors keep buying English football
For a business audience, the logic is not hard to follow. America’s major leagues — the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — are closed shops. There is no promotion or relegation, the number of teams is fixed, and incumbent owners rarely sell. Buying into the NFL, football-finance analysts point out, can cost somewhere between $5bn and $10bn, pricing out all but a handful of buyers. English football offers an alternative: global reach, an open pyramid and, crucially, valuations that still look modest by American standards.
Newcastle United is the clearest illustration. Ranked by Forbes among the most valuable clubs in the Premier League and inside the top twenty worldwide, the club was recently valued at less than the Columbus Blue Jackets — the lowest-valued franchise in the NHL — despite carrying several times the social-media following and playing in a stadium nearly three times the size. To American investors, that gap reads as opportunity: a globally recognised brand they believe has been run conservatively and, in the industry’s phrase, left unsweated. The Premier League’s international broadcasting income, still climbing, is the engine they are buying into.
Ticket prices, the Super League and the fan backlash
The influx has not been universally welcomed. American ownership has coincided with steep rises in ticket prices, and supporters’ groups have pushed back hard. The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust has characterised the trend as a model of squeezing ever more revenue out of fans, and organised protests have flared at Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton across the past two seasons. The deepest wound remains the 2021 European Super League, when six English clubs — several of them American-owned — tried to break away into a closed competition, only to retreat within days amid a furious backlash from supporters and government alike.
Beneath the anger lies a wider argument about where football’s money ends up. While billions flow through the top flight, the grassroots game continues to scrap for funding — a contrast that critics of the modern ownership model return to again and again.
What the new football regulator means for owners
The politics of all this have now hardened into law. The Football Governance Act 2025 received Royal Assent in July 2025 and created an Independent Football Regulator with statutory powers over the top five tiers of the English men’s game. For prospective owners — American or otherwise — the most consequential change is a new suitability test that scrutinises the source and sufficiency of their funds, alongside their honesty, integrity and competence. Every club will also need an operating licence to compete from the 2027-28 season, and will have to seek the regulator’s approval before relocating a stadium, altering its badge or primary colours, or borrowing against its ground.
The regulator, led by a former Financial Conduct Authority director, has signalled an interventionist stance and has already agreed to share information with the FCA. Its remit runs from club-level financial soundness to the heritage of the game itself — a direct response to years of collapses, mismanagement and the Super League affair. For US investors accustomed to lightly regulated, closed leagues at home, English football is about to become a more closely policed place to own a business.
What happens next
None of this looks likely to stem the flow of American money in the near term; the underlying maths that makes English clubs attractive has not changed. What is changing is the environment around the assets: tighter regulation, more assertive supporters and a commercial ecosystem — broadcasting, sponsorship and the regulated betting market tracked by comparison platforms such as Betiton — that keeps expanding in value. For the new wave of American owners, the challenge is no longer simply buying into the Premier League. It is proving they can run it in a way that fans, and now a regulator, will accept.
