Do English Fans Expect Too Much From Billionaires?

By: Daryl | September 16th, 2008

Reason I ask is that both Newcastle United and Liverpool fans protested against their billionaire owners this weekend, with the biggest bone of contention being finances (and, to be fair, Dennis Wise). Both sets of fans want their club to be challenging Chelsea and Manchester United, and expected their billionaire owners to spend accordingly.

They are billionaires after all, right?

But truth is: not every billionaire owner is Roman Abramovich or Abu Dhabi United Investment Group. Abramovich has happily (or mostly happily) handed his managers massive sums of cash the last few years. And it’s worked a treat (if you ignore Andriy Shevchenko) and the Abu Dhabi Group looks very likely to do a similar thing at Man City (except they probably won’t buy Shevchenko.) But – as Liverpool and Newcastle fans found out recently – not all billionaires are willing to do the same.

Because there are varying levels of wealth involved and varying levels of willingness to part with cash. Most billionaires became billionaires by making smart business moves. And dumping vast sums of money into transfer fees and wages and getting not a great deal in return is not a smart business move. Mike Ashley may or may not have had the personal finances to turn Newcastle into Premier League winners, but he’d have spent most of his fortune doing so.

Roman Abramovich and the Abu Dhabi Group are the exception, not the norm. They’re the owners with mega-billions who are willing to throw that money into football. And so while we may end up with a Premier League full of foreign big money owners (foreign or otherwise) we almost certainly won’t end up with 20 billionaires all trying to outspend each other to win the Premier League.

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Category: English Premier League

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Aleksandar Filip

At the moment the best footballer in the world is Andriy SHEVCHENKO. EPL does not stand such big names, because theirs are then too small with no WORLD-CLASS quality like SHEVA!!
frem

roman didnt just sugar daddy chelsea he allowed them to have an actual way to make money, its no coincidence that chelsea are now a big name up their with arsenal, liverpool and manU. They have a brand power now that allows better players to come as well as sell more.
ManC will also go that route, Newcastle were never gonna go that route because to that you need to overhaul the entire infrastructure and playing base which will cost 600 million dollars or more since chelsea at least had some high level players.
g

Hicks and Gillet aren't billionaires anyway, they are skint lying con-men. Credit Crunch or no Credit Crunch they never intended to honour their promises. At least Ashley actually spent money to clear Newcastle's debt, whilst Liverpool's 'owners' are pilling more and more debt onto the club. *insert swear words here*
j

As you know since the establishment of the Premier League the fan base has changed radically and in impact has not only what the (new)fan expects from ownership but what they value.