Today, Friday 14 June, sees the UK release of the film about Argentina’s controversial football player, Diego Maradona, by Oscar-winning British director Asif Kapadia. A short – and later fat – little man, born in Lanύs Oeste, a working-class suburb of greater Buenos Aires, Maradona is considered by many to be one of the world’s finest; like him or not, together with Brazil’s Pélé, he was named joint FIFA Player of the Century in 2000.
Last Friday, 7 June, the 2019 Women’s Football World Cup kicked off and, although the prize money to be shared between the 24 teams has doubled since 2015 to $30m, as in so many walks of life it trails the men’s $400m. I hear that more than 45,000 tickets were bought for the first match at Paris’ Parc des Princes stadium, and nearly 1m were snapped up for the rest of the tournament, which France is hosting.
I’m sure you’ll be aware that this year, despite Brexit, all four European football finalists were British teams – three from London, no less. At the UEFA Europa League final Chelsea smashed arch rival Arsenal 4-1, with Eden Hazard (who has just been signed by Real Madrid for a record €100m) declared ‘man of the match’. In UEFA’s Champions League final Liverpool won 2-0 against Tottenham Hotspur – playing its first final. ‘Football’s coming home’ and ‘about time too’, some might say of the game Brits allegedly invented.
All of which set me thinking: how can one invest in and profit from the world’s most popular spectator sport? I was truly surprised to hear that so few clubs are listed companies, with most still in private hands. This does, of course, have advantages, such as no pesky shareholders to answer to and petty cash not diluted by dividends. Equally interesting is that of the few exchange traded ones, most were floated within the past 25 years.
So, to the few charts we could get our hands on – as several clubs have delisted. Germany’s only publicly owned club, Borussia Dortmund (which a bookish ex-colleague helpfully noted meant Prussia in Latin) has by far the best and most positive chart of the four I’ve picked. A steady if unspectacular rally since 2009, it picked up the pace in 2017 and last year suggested a new bullish momentum had kicked in. We look forward to more dynamic moves, and more volatility, coming up.
Associazione Sportiva Roma is old school, formed in 1927 from three local clubs. It struggled during and after the second world war, although things picked up in the 1960s. Listed on the Borsa Italiana in 2000, its chart since 2009 is depressing indeed. Fluctuating between 40 and 80 cents of a euro, the chart’s grim.
Manchester United, the club with the highest revenues in the world, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Another long-term laggard which has moved sideways between $14 and $20 for years, it saw a speculative flurry last summer. This appears unsustainable and we shall revert to trading as per status quo.
Our final chart is Aim-traded Celtic, and an excellent example of how differently minnows chart; days and weeks of no price moves, it’s obvious that few shares change hands. Not the case in the years leading to the millennium; I’m guessing their game is not up to much.
