Wrexham and Ted Lasso are expected to inspire a complete American takeover of the EFL, with Ryan Reynolds and Tom Brady already on board.

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• Famous faces are flocking to invest
• More expected in years to come
• Just about every club open to offers

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  WHAT HAPPENED?

  Outside investment continues to flood into the English Football League, with a barely a week going by without speculation surfacing regarding some sort of takeover. Rap star A$AP Rocky, the partner of music icon Rihanna, is among the latest to have generated surprising headlines at Tranmere.

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  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  Hollywood actors Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have made the EFL fashionable with their exploits at Wrexham, which are being caught on camera for an award-winning documentary series. NFL legends Brady and JJ Watt are now involved with Birmingham and Burley respectively, while Anchorman star Will Ferrell owns a small stake in Leeds.

• WHAT FOOTBALL FINANCE EXPERT SAID

  More funding could soon cross the Atlantic, with football finance expert Adam Sommerfeld telling the podcast: “[You have] guys with ultra-high net worth who have seen ‘Welcome to Wrexham’, seen Ted Lasso and said: ‘I want to buy a team’. I can’t see how it won’t be all of them [owned by Americans] because you’ve got 14 in the Premier League majority LP owned, then you’ve got in the EFL at least a third [already owned by Americans].

  "I’m not aware of a team really that hasn’t had a conversation with the US investors in recent months. It’s normally the case that you have a couple of hedge fund guys, private equity guys, they’ll go in obviously to try and get the best deal but every team is talking to US investors at the moment so I’d be more surprised if they weren’t all US-owned."

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  WHAT NEXT?

  Football’s ever-growing popularity in the States – aided by the Ted Lasso television series and the presence of superstar names such as Lionel Messi in MLS – means that further investment in teams a long way outside of North America would appear to be inevitable.

Tags: Futebol
Category: News