Financing models for football clubs: developments and legal challenges

Professional football today faces a complex economic equation, driven in particular by growing demands for sporting competitiveness against a backdrop of instability in certain traditional revenue streams. In this context, clubs can no longer rely solely on income from broadcasting rights, matchday revenues or conventional sponsorship.

Over the past fifteen years, a marked diversification in the financing models of football clubs has emerged, incorporating innovative mechanisms such as crowdfunding, royalty-based investment, multi-club group structures, and, more recently, the use of digital assets and cryptocurrencies.

This article provides a cross-cutting analysis of these various models, with a view to shedding light on the economic shifts taking place in professional football and the legal challenges they give rise to.

1. Traditional Financing Sources: A Structural Foundation Under Strain

Traditionally, the economics of football clubs rest on three pillars:

• Broadcasting rights, which often constitute the primary source of revenue, particularly for clubs competing in major leagues;
• Matchday revenues and merchandising, dependent on stadium attendance and the club’s brand recognition;
• Sponsorship and commercial partnerships, based on the exploitation of image rights and media visibility.

While these resources remain essential, they are subject to significant volatility and prove insufficient to ensure the financial stability of many clubs, particularly in the event of sporting relegation or an economic downturn. A recent illustration of this is the sharp decline in television rights following the Mediapro collapse.

2. Supporter Participation: Popular Shareholding and Civic Financing

Supporter Shareholding and Associative Models

The financial participation of supporters reflects a logic of “civic” financing in football. It aims to strengthen clubs’ local roots while diversifying their revenue streams.

In Germany, the 50+1 rule requires that the founding supporters’ association retains a majority shareholding in the club.

In Spain, the socios model remains iconic, most notably at FC Barcelona, where supporters collectively own the club and participate directly in its governance.

In France, comparable initiatives have emerged in forms adapted to the national legal framework:

• FC Sochaux-Montbéliard provides a striking example: faced with major financial difficulties, the club benefited from the mobilisation of its supporters through associations such as Sociochaux, enabling entry into the club’s capital and a stabilisation of its shareholding structure.
• En Avant Guingamp has also implemented an associative model of supporter participation, illustrating the emergence of community-driven financing rather than the exclusive pursuit of profitability (through the creation of the association known as the Kalons).
• Following its administrative relegation in 2017, Sporting Club de Bastia rebuilt around a Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif (SCIC — a form of cooperative company), marking a first for a professional football club in France.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has gradually established itself as a complementary tool to bank or equity financing. It enables clubs or football-related project promoters to raise funds from the public, in the form of donations, loans, equity investments or revenue-sharing mechanisms.

In this regard, the platform Finance Ton Foot represents a particularly innovative example. It allows individual investors to finance football projects in exchange for quarterly royalty payments indexed to the club’s turnover.

This hybrid model, sitting at the intersection of financial investment and emotional engagement, has the advantage of limiting the club’s indebtedness while offering contributors a potential return. It does, however, raise specific legal challenges, particularly with regard to the qualification of financial instruments and investor protection.

3. Opening Up to Financial Markets and Private Investors

Stock Market Listing and Capital Markets

Some clubs have chosen to turn to financial markets in order to raise significant capital. In France, Olympique Lyonnais remains the most emblematic example of a listed football club.

A stock market listing enables clubs to finance major structural projects (stadiums, training centres, international development), but it also entails greater transparency, rigorous governance and exposure to financial market fluctuations — which can prove difficult to reconcile with the inherent unpredictability of sporting performance.

Institutional Investors and Investment Funds

In parallel, the entry of private investors — investment funds, industrial groups or sovereign wealth funds — has become a major financing lever in professional football.

The acquisition of Paris Saint-Germain by Qatar Sports Investments, or the development of clubs controlled by Anglo-Saxon funds, illustrate this trend (FSG at Liverpool FC, Oaktree Capital at Inter Milan, etc.). These investments enable substantial capital injections, but also raise questions regarding governance, economic dependency and sporting fairness.

4. Multi-Club Ownership: An Industrial Structuring of Football

The development of multi-club ownership is one of the most structurally significant shifts in contemporary football. Groups such as City Football Group, Red Bull, Eagle Football Group, RedBird Capital and The Friedkin Group now own several clubs across different leagues.

Chelsea FC, integrated into a broader investment strategy, or the Red Bull-branded clubs (Salzburg, Leipzig) illustrate this model, built on the pooling of resources, player circulation and the optimisation of economic performance.

While this structure offers undeniable financial advantages, it also raises risks of conflicts of interest and calls into question the ability of sporting governing bodies to preserve the integrity of competitions. The circumstances surrounding the departure of Liam Rosenior, head coach of RC Strasbourg, to Chelsea FC serve as a perfect illustration of this.

These issues are not new and are in fact the subject of a bill tabled in April 2025 by Éric Coquerel (LFI), aimed at regulating cross-ownership of French and foreign clubs in order to preserve sporting unpredictability.

5. Financing Through Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets

Fan Tokens: A Digitalised Form of Crowdfunding

Fan tokens now represent one of the most innovative forms of club financing. They enable supporters to acquire digital tokens associated with their club, generating immediate revenue while offering symbolic participation rights.

Paris Saint-Germain was among the pioneering clubs in this area. When Lionel Messi joined in 2021, part of his signing bonus was paid in the form of digital tokens.

FC Barcelona, for its part, raised over 1.2 million euros within a matter of hours during its first fan token issuance. Clubs such as Juventus, Manchester City, AC Milan and Arsenal have adopted similar arrangements in order to diversify their revenue streams.

Crypto Sponsorship and Web3 Partnerships

Cryptocurrency players are also entering football through sponsorship partnerships. Manchester City partnered with the OKX platform, while Watford FC displayed the Dogecoin logo during the 2021-2022 season through a partnership with Stake.com.

More recently, Atlético de Madrid concluded a strategic partnership with Kraken, confirming the lasting foothold of the Web3 sector in football’s economy.

The evolution of football club financing models reveals a profound transformation in the economics of sport. Faced with the insufficiency and volatility of traditional revenue streams, clubs are increasingly turning to innovative legal mechanisms combining supporter participation, crowdfunding, financial engineering, international investment and digital assets.

Given the growing number and sophistication of financing models available to football clubs, the choice of the most appropriate model cannot be reduced to a standardised or purely financial approach. Each club has its own specific characteristics, shaped by its history, territorial roots, sporting culture, governance structure and short, medium and long-term objectives.

The involvement of a specialised law firm is therefore crucial in supporting club executives in identifying and implementing appropriate and legally sound financing solutions.

This support includes in particular:

• selecting a financing model consistent with the club’s local culture and the involvement of its supporters;
• structuring transactions compatible with sporting objectives and the long-term economic sustainability of the project;
• securing governance arrangements and capital balance, particularly in the event of investor entry or participatory mechanisms;
• anticipating tax, regulatory and financial challenges, at both national and European level;
• preventing litigation and reputational risks associated with innovative mechanisms (crowdfunding, cryptocurrencies, multi-club ownership).

In an environment where professional football is now fully integrated into contemporary economic and financial logic, legal counsel thus constitutes an essential strategic lever for reconciling sporting performance, financial stability and regulatory compliance.