What do you get if you put Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds in a room, and then Joel Glazer, Stan Kroenke and John W Henry walk in? In less than 12 months' time the scene could be played out at a Premier League board meeting.
The landscape of English football is changing and it could be more seismic than you think. The home of Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and even Sheffield United and Millwall has become the location of the most sought-after sporting real estate in the world and American owners are at the forefront of the land grab.
When Malcolm Glazer completed a £790 million ($1.06 billion) takeover of Manchester United in May 2005, the New York billionaire became the first American owner in the Premier League. Twenty years later, 11 Premier League clubs are majority-owned by American individuals, families, celebrities or private equity groups. Drop down to the EFL Championship, English football's second tier and direct feeder league to the Premier League, and nine clubs are majority-owned by U.S. firms of individuals, including Wrexham. Even Gillingham, top of the table in League Two, are under American ownership.
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Could the American influence see the sport's top domestic league move toward NFL or NBA-style salary caps, player trading, drafts and even regular season games being played overseas? Here are the biggest questions about the growing influence of American ownership in English football.
What's the ownership breakdown in the Premier League right now?
There are 20 Premier League clubs and only three -- Brentford, Brighton and Tottenham Hotspur -- are wholly-owned by English individuals or groups.
The four-most successful clubs in English football history -- Liverpool (Fenway Sports Group), Manchester United (Glazer family), Arsenal (Kroenke Sports & Entertainment - KSE) and Chelsea (Clearlake Capital / Todd Boehly) -- are all majority-owned by American groups. The others are Aston Villa (V Sports, jointly-owned by Wes Edens), Bournemouth (Black Knight Football Club, led by Bill Foley), Burnley (Velocity Sports Limited, led by Alan Pace), Crystal Palace (Woody Johnson), Everton (The Friedkin Group), Fulham (Shahid Khan) and Leeds United (49ers Enterprises), with sports stars (JJ Watt / Burnley) and Hollywood stars (Will Ferrell / Leeds, Michael B Jordan / Bournemouth) getting involved as minority investors.
Even Manchester City have American investment: while Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi is the majority owner, Silver Lake, an American private equity group, has an 18% stake in the club. Outside the three English-owned clubs, a further five -- Newcastle United (Saudi Arabia), Nottingham Forest (Greece), Wolves (China), West Ham (UK / Czechia) and Sunderland (France / Switzerland / Uruguay) -- have no U.S. ownership involvement.
There are also lots of U.S. owners in the EFL, right?
You can't have missed Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds (the Hollywood A-Lister) at Wrexham, but there are plenty more clubs with American owners in the second tier.
Snoop Dogg became a co-owner of Swansea City in July -- the Welsh club was purchased by U.S. businessmen Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen in Nov 2024 -- while NFL legend Tom Brady is part of the ownership group at Birmingham City, whose major shareholder is Tom Wagner of New York-based financial company Knighthead Capital Management.
Ipswich Town (Gamechanger, an Arizona-based pension fund), Millwall (James Berylson, Massachusetts-based Private Equity fund owner), Norwich (Mark Attanasio, owner of Milwaukee Brewers), Portsmouth (Michael Eisner, former Disney CEO), Sheffield United (COH Sports Group, Cleveland & California-based) and West Brom (Shilen & Kiran Patel, Indian-American businessmen) take the number of Championship clubs with majority U.S. ownership to nine.
Why are there so many U.S. owners, and what is the appeal?
In no particular order, it is about glamour, sporting excitement, ego and the opportunity to make a huge return on the initial investment. But primarily, it is about money.
"From an investment perspective, the track record is compelling and Manchester United serves as a prime example," Chris Mann, Head of Sporting Strategy & Insight at Sportsology Group, which has advised on Premier League club acquisitions, told ESPN. "The Glazers acquired the club for around £800 million in 2005, and by the time of Ineos's investment in Feb 2024, the total enterprise value of United was over £4 billion -- that's a 400% increase over 20 years.
"It's also significant that since the 2008 financial crash, the U.S. economy has recovered and grown at a far faster rate than the European economies and, in particularly, the UK. It's created a surplus of cash among this class of investor who are wealthy enough to come and buy into European sports, but may be priced out of the U.S. market."
While relegation or promotion add to the tension involved with some of these ownership groups -- Burnley, Leeds United and Ipsiwch have been promoted to, and relegated from, the Premier League since being acquired by American ownership -- there is an evident upside to picking soccer over traditional American sports.
"There's a much lower point of entry in terms of valuation. The most recent NBA sale was the Boston Celtics, who were sold for $6.1 billion (£4.54bn) in March. Todd Boehly and Clearlake bought Chelsea for £2.5 billion ($3.36bn) in May 2022, so there is real value there."
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The acquisition of land is also important. Arsenal sold the Emirates Stadium to Kroenke's KSE group for £120 million ($162.5m) in 2022, handing the owners a piece of prime real estate in one of the world's most prestigious cities. In plans drawn up by Manchester United to build a new stadium at Old Trafford, there are proposals for 17,000 homes to be built on the existing site when a new arena is constructed nearby. With the average house price in Manchester listed at £242,000 ($327,750) in June 2025, a simple mathematical equation highlights the value of the land upon which football stadia are built.
There are other business opportunities -- all stemming back to money -- but acquiring a Premier League team offers routes into the lucrative entertainment industry.
"The investors are looking at football as not really a sports investment, but more of an entertainment investment," Mann said. "If you think of football as part of a wider entertainment landscape, sports teams within that have proved to be more recession-proof than other businesses in different sectors.
"I don't want to call fans "customers," but if you look at them as customers, they're effectively a captive audience locked in due to their own loyalty, which means they can be relied upon to pay to watch their team, no matter what.
"The other element of that is in terms of broadcast, live sports is one of the only things remaining that has a sort of cross-generational appeal and cuts through in an entertainment market that's incredibly diversified and atomized."
Simon Jordan, the former owner of Crystal Palace -- New York Jets owner Woody Johnson bought a 43% stake in the club in July -- agrees that future revenues from entertainment streams are a key factor driving the move to invest in Premier League teams.
"Todd Boehly and his gang didn't buy Chelsea for £2.5 billion because they thought they were buying a pup," Jordan told Talksport. "They bought it because they think it's going to be worth something for a variety of different reasons by having access to customer base around the world.
"And of course, sporting broadcast rights are just going to keep on getting bigger."
So the financial appeal of English football, and Premier League teams in particular, is clear, but what about the romance?
"There is the "halo effect" that has happened because of Rob and Ryan at Wrexham," Mann said. "They are making a very good go of Wrexham in fairly unique circumstances and creating an entertainment product off the back of a small Welsh club.
"It's been quite incongruous, but because it has happened, there is a sense that it can be replicated elsewhere. I'm not convinced it can, but when I speak to potential investors from the U.S., they reference Wrexham all the time. It's not necessarily a driver for the real big hitter investors or big private equity companies, but among the kind of wealthy individuals who maybe come from entertainment background, it's certainly a thing."
How do U.S. owners change their clubs once they take over?
"Lots of Town Halls, talk of 'synergies' and a promise of being 'light-touch,'" is the blueprint according to one source who has worked through the ownership transitions of two Premier League clubs take over by American groups.
"There is also a big drive to upgrade the stadium facilities to make them more appealing to the corporate market. From the outside looking in, other American-bought clubs have gone through the same checklist. They also like to run things from the U.S., while having "eyes on the ground" to take implement their plans on a local level."
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ESPN has contacted multiple U.S.-owned clubs to speak directly to the owners for this article, but none had chosen to engage at time of publication.
However, that isn't unusual. Kroenke had earned the nickname "Silent Stan" even before he bought Arsenal due to the rarity of his public statements, while the Glazer family, despite United co-chairman Joel Glazer saying upon completion of the takeover 20 years ago that "day in, day out that we have to reach out to our supporters," have not given a single interview since speaking to MUTV, the club's in-house channel in 2005. Representatives of one American-owned club even told the media not to expect regular communication with the owners.
Paraag Marathe, the Leeds United chairman, declined an invitation to speak to ESPN for this article, but in an interview with ESPN in 2021, shortly after 49ers Enterprises acquired their stake in the club, Marathe outlined the strategy he expected to implement at Elland Road.
"Leeds today reminds me of the 49ers 15 years ago," Marathe told ESPN. "Both teams with a great fan-base and history. The 49ers had such great success in the '80s and '90s, like Leeds in the '70s, and both were struggling a little bit on and off the pitch and the 49ers were playing, at the time, at the oldest un-renovated stadium in the NFL. We built a new stadium, which completely transformed our franchise and it's the same thing that we want to do here at Leeds.
"I look to our domestic friends in the U.S. and what they've done, with what John W Henry enacted with his group [FSG] and what they've done with Liverpool as another good example of growing a franchise and developing a club. But at the end of the day, you still need to build properly. You don't want to just go all in and then crash and burn the following year."
Four years on, Leeds are back in the Premier League following relegation in 2023 and in April, they announced plans to modernize and enlarge Elland Road, following a path already taken by U.S.-owned clubs including Liverpool, Bournemouth, Burnley and Fulham.
U.S. owners see themselves as popular, fan-focused innovators, but what do the fans think?
Here, it depends who you ask and is largely dependent on the success, or failure, of a team with American owners. It's a safe bet that Liverpool, Birmingham and Wrexham supporters will have a different view of American ownership models than those at Manchester United, who have protested against the Glazers through good and bad times.
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In Liverpool, fans are pretty happy with FSG. Despite complaints and anger over the years about ticket prices and their involvement as a driving force behind the failed plans to launch a European Super League in 2021, the Boston-based owners have delivered plenty of unforgettable moments. In addition to two Premier League titles in four seasons, the club's first league titles in 30 years, and a UEFA Champions League crown, the spent £415 million ($557.8m) this summer to rebuild the team while also retaining beloved stars Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk before they became free agents.
The Glazers have never been popular among Manchester United supporters due to their 2005 takeover saddling the once debt-free club with £660m ($887m) of borrowings. After 20 years of ownership, the Glazers have cost United £1.2 billion ($1.6bn) in interest payments, debt charges and dividend payments, so they remain hugely unpopular at Old Trafford.
"Twenty years of the Glazers and their debt mountain is 20 years too long. Enough is enough," a spokesman for United fans' group, The 1958, told ESPN. "Football is consuming itself. What's happening at Manchester United is a warning to every other club. For us, it's a calculated attempt to Americanize and franchise the game we love.
"We warned of the Americanization of our clubs and game three years ago and this is being realised now. They [owners] want a monopoly, to control where games are played, to remove the jeopardy of our league system, to charge what they want.
"If this continues, the sport will be left hollow, a commercial product with no soul. Football is nothing without the fans."
The so-called "Americanization of football" has been an issue ever since the start of the Premier League in 1992-93, when NFL-style cheerleaders and fireworks greeted the first broadcast of Monday Night Football -- English club games had rarely been played on Monday before the Premier League began -- in August, 1992. Over the years, the commercialization of the sport has benefited many clubs, with the Glazers -- also owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers -- using their NFL marketing knowledge to quadruple United's annual commercial revenue from £157m-a-year in 2005 to £662m ($890m) in 2025.
"The Glazers were revolutionary in how they would slice-and-dice United's commercial brand for revenue growth," Mann said. "A lot of clubs saw that as best practice and followed that path. That's the way U.S. ownership has most influenced the Premier League: it's more 'watch-and-learn' than being told what to do while sat round the boardroom table."
Since acquiring Chelsea three years ago, Clearlake and Boehly -- Boehly also co-owns the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball -- have ramped up the club's data analysis team in an effort to mirror the use of analytics in U.S. sport and boost Chelsea's success rate with player recruitment. The club have also adopted the American sports model of lengthy player contracts -- Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson signed nine-year contracts in 2024 -- and this initiative was followed by Manchester City in January, when Erling Haaland signed a nine-and-half-year deal at the Etihad.
But there is some hostility towards Boehly among the Chelsea fans due to the changes he has introduced. In March, the Chelsea Supporters' Trust (CST) wrote to Premier League CEO Richard Masters to express its "dismay" and "concern" at the club using ticket resale company Vivid Seats -- Boehly sits on the board of Vivid Seats and is a shareholder in the company -- to re-sell tickets at inflated prices. The CST accused Boehly of a "breach of trust" and the Premier League has since written to the Chelsea co-owner about the matter.
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For Rob and Ryan at Wrexham, however, their approach has been a light touch on the football side. Their objective has been to leave football "to the experts" while they grow the Wrexham brand through the "Welcome to Wrexham" documentary that's chronicled the club's rise from tier five to tier two in three years.
"We're standing on the shoulders of giants," Rob Mac told ITV Sport. "We just look to see what other clubs have done to be successful in the past, and then what they've done to not be successful in the past and try to avoid that as much as possible.
"And that includes staying out of football business. Our job is to tell the story. Our job is to promote the club, but ultimately defer to the people who know about football."
So how influential are the U.S. owners, and could they change the Premier League?
From a purely numbers perspective, there are 11 U.S.-owned clubs in the Premier League in 2025, and any rule change would require 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs to vote in favour. This clause was designed at the outset of the Premier League in 1992 to ensure that the most powerful clubs would not be able to force through changes at the expense of smaller clubs.
That said, we've already seen that the U.S. owners don't always share the same point of view when it comes to voting as a group. Last November, a vote to approve changes to the Associated Party Transaction Rules (APT) was passed by a 16-4 majority, despite Manchester City and Aston Villa writing to rival clubs asking them to vote against the changes. Villa, co-owned by American billionaire Wes Edens, voted alongside City, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest to block the rule change. Every other club with American ownership backed the change, making Villa's move significant.
While there have been alliances in the past involving Liverpool, United and Arsenal -- the failed Super League plans being the most controversial initiative -- sources have told ESPN it would be wrong to believe that American owners are working from within the Premier League to adopt U.S.-style regulations such as salary caps, ending relegation and league games played overseas.
"The American-owned clubs don't march in step," a source familiar with Premier League ownership meetings told ESPN. "There is no fear that the American owners are coming in and trying to Americanize the Premier League. That's not the sense of it, largely because for them to run a club effectively, they have to engage with the local community and the local fans on their terms.
"Increasingly, American ownership groups are coming in and they respect what the Premier League is, what the heritage of English football is and then work within that. But they all do it differently. The Glazers have been criticized for how they have engaged with United's supporters over the years, but Liverpool saw lessons could be learned and contrasted themselves from United in that sense."
If there is a fear of the Premier League being taken in a direction against the wishes of supporters, there is a precedent in Italy that may give them confidence that the heritage and unique qualities of English football will remain unaffected.
"There was a concern in Italy when RedBird Capital bought AC Milan [in August, 2022]," Mann said. "There was a sense that a critical mass had been reached because six or seven Serie A clubs, including Bologna, Roma and Fiorentina, were suddenly owned by American groups. Maybe it says more about the Italian cultural resistance to outside influence, but that's not really happened. There's not a block of U.S. owners in Serie A that are working together."
Bill Foley, the American owner of Bournemouth, is one Premier League powerbroker who has gone public with his insistence that regular season games should not be taken overseas.
"The traditions here are so strong and so important that we really shouldn't be playing Premier League games in the United States or in other countries," Foley told Sky Sports. "We need to play them here, in front of our fans. I'm committed to that.
"I don't know how many people want to play Premier League games in America, but I'm not one of them."
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So what happens if any of Snoop Dogg, Mac/Reynolds or Tom Brady take their clubs into the Premier League next season?
It would certainly add even more celebrity buzz to the Premier League, and Swansea, Birmingham and Wrexham could all win promotion this season, but it would need three non-American owned clubs to be relegated from the top-flight to open up the prospect of 14 Premier League teams being U.S.-owned.
The controversy of the failed Super League plans highlighted how passionate English supporters are when it comes to their football teams and any moves to alter the fabric of the game will almost certainly be resisted again. That means there will be great hostility towards ending promotion and relegation and the 2008 attempt to play Premier League games overseas has not been revisited since, with CEO Richard Masters saying last month that the idea has "dissipated."
"Our objective at the time, when thinking about it, was to help grow the Premier League around the world," Masters told reporters. "But we've been able to do that through different means, through brilliant broadcast partnerships, through digital technology, investing in other areas, and now the Premier League is a genuinely global league.
"So we've achieved that objective by different means, that necessity has dissipated."
So for now, at least, there are no plans to take Premier League games overseas or adopt the NFL / NBA models of salary caps and no relegation.
The unpredictability, the tradition and -- perhaps most of all -- the chance to make a big buck in English football is what is driving the American interest in the game. But as the American presence and influence grows, the powerbase of the English game will continue to shift westwards across the Atlantic.