Leeds United's 49ers Enterprises takeover is morphing into something few could have expected - Leeds Live 20/6/23
49ers Enterprises' Leeds United takeover has taken several twists and turns since its original investment in 2018 and the fully-fledged final form is something few fans could have expected at the start
Week by week, more and more multimillionaire sports stars
from the USA seem to crawl out of the Leeds United woodwork. The current 49ers Enterprises
landscape could not look more different to the vision we expected to unfold
when Paraag Marathe was paraded in 2018.
Yesterday, The Athletic reported Rudy Cline-Thomas, a US
sports entrepreneur, and Andre Iguodala, a four-time NBA champion, were the
latest names to emerge as investors in the 49ers vehicle. Cline-Thomas could
even end up with a seat on the Elland Road board.
You can add their names to the likes of Larry Nance and T.J.
McConnell, of the NBA, and prospective investors Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth
and Justin Thomas, world-class golfers. All of them millionaires, all of them
with high-profile followings and potentially legions of new Leeds fans.
It’s all a far cry from summer 2018 when Marathe turned up
at Elland Road to front an investment of around £11m. At that stage, it felt
like this chapter in United’s history would play out as a conventional deal,
primarily involving the San Francisco NFL franchise itself.
Massimo Cellino’s ownership had run into Andrea Radrizzani’s
and, in due course, Marathe or Jed York, 49ers chief executive officer, would
go on to front something exclusively connected with the NFL outfit. In the
years since then, through the shareholding increases to 37 and then 44 per
cent, it has morphed into something entirely different.
More and more external investors have come aboard, with
their varying levels of influence and expertise, but this is very different to
what fans may have expected five years ago. From the traditional arrangement of
one single figurehead at the wheel, see Cellino or Radrizzani, Leeds is about
to be steered by a broad church of voices, guided by a new-look board.
An example of what rich and famous owners can do is being
illustrated at Wrexham. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney may be running the
show on their own at the Racecourse Ground, calling all the shots, but it
remains to be seen what a Nance or Fowler might bring to the party with a
minority stake.