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Aston Villa owner Wes Edens speaks out over ‘bold’ £377m US project after shareholder meeting
Aston Villa are a rare success story in football finance where an owner has gone to the Premier League casino and beaten the house.
Owners Wes Edens, Nassef Sawiris and the private equity firm Atairos have backed Unai Emery and Monchi by underwriting hundreds of millions of pounds worth of financial losses in recent years.
The wage bill in particular is extraordinarily high. For the first time, a club outside the so-called Big Six has broken their mould. Villa spent more on wages than Spurs last season. We haven’t got the figures for 2024-25 yet, but it will be a similar picture this time around too.
The revenue between the Big Six and the chasing pack is still massive, mind.
That’s why, despite spending less than the two Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea in total terms, it is Villa that have broken UEFA’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and are walking a tightrope with the Premier League system.
There are workarounds, though. Aston Villa have £28m of assets that they could sell to a sister company in a Chelsea-style deal. The sale of the women’s team option via the same channel is being considered too.
This is the complex backdrop to what has been a wonderful season on the pitch for Villa.
They fell just short of a miraculous comeback against Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-final, fans have enjoyed so many moments of ecstasy in the Champions League this season.
There’s every chance they could be there again next term. Ahead of tonight’s blockbuster meeting with Manchester, Unai Emery’s side are 7th in the table but just a single point outside the Champions League places.
And as University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire put it in exclusive conversation with TBR Football last week: “In the Champions League, one year is for the fans, two or three years are for the balance sheet.”
A second season in Europe’s premier competition would give a real platform for sustained success. And with the expansion of Villa Park on the horizon, Aston Villa 2.0 could be born
Exactly how profitable or otherwise the club might be for the owners isn’t yet clear.
One thing is for sure, however – it won’t match what Wes Edens is making in his other sports ventures.
Wes Edens to European NBA franchise – could Aston Vill be host?
Edens made his billions in the private equity sphere, investing primarily in industry through his Fortress Investments Group.
He entered sports ownership in 2014, paying around £400m alongside Marc Landry to buy NBA franchise the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Bucks won the NBA Championship in 2021 and are now worth an estimated £3.1bn.
Like most US franchise sports, the NBA is in a perpetual growth phase.
One area that the NBA are looking at is expansion into the European market with an officially sanctioned professional league.
It is believed that the expansion fee for NBA Europe could be as much as £377m, although the franchise, closed-loop system it would operate under would – unlike Aston Villa – guarantee a profit.
Interestingly, Premier League and European clubs have been invited to brand the teams that will play in the completion. Could Villa be one?
Edens didn’t address that in his recent conversation with The , but he did talk about the value of NBA Europe as an investment prospect.
We had our league meetings last week and we talked a lot about the European opportunity, which I think is going to develop over the next couple of years. That is a monumental step.
“Because if you look around the world, I’m an investor in the Premier League (with Aston Villa) and nobody owns world soccer.
“There’s Premier League, then there’s La Liga, then there’s Serie A, there’s Bundesliga and so on. In basketball, the NBA can kind of own basketball around the world and be the brand setter for all this.
“I think going and starting a league in Europe is a bold step. I think it has tremendous promise. If you look at the number of athletes (who) come out of Europe, it’s a very long list.
“Many of our most recent MVPs are out of there, but there’s so much talent there and I think putting a league with this kind of imprimatur with the NBA on the continent is exciting.
“I think it’s an exciting time for the NBA, broadly speaking, and I think the valuation of the Celtics is going to reflect that (the Boston Celtics were recently sold for world-record fee).”
Could Edens’ Villa ownership link with Atairos open up NBA media opportunity?
With the NFL also looking to come to Europe, connections in the media right space could be useful for Edens.
Significantly, Atairos – Edens and Sawiris co-investor in Villa – is financed by Comcast, who own Sky.
Sky want to be front of the queue to renew their UK deal to air the NFL. Their existing contract expires in the summer.
For the NBA, Sky share the UK rights with Amazon. How the NBA rights for a European NBA league would be sold remains to be seen, but Edens’ business link with Atairos could be significant.