Citywealth Quick Insight Series on Sports Trends – Chris Harber, Boyes Turner

Date: 01 Jul 2026

Karen Jones

This week’s Citywealth Quick Insight Series on Sports Trends is dedicated to Chris Harber, Partner & Head of Immigration at Boyes Turner.

How has sports investment evolved from a passion driven purchase into a recognised alternative asset class, and what factors are driving increased institutional participation?

The shift is real and largely complete. Three things drove it. First, scarcity with pricing power: there are only twenty Premier League places, thirty NBA franchises, and that fixed supply against rising global media demand produces the kind of appreciation institutional capital is built to capture. Second, the data has caught up. Once leagues professionalised their commercial operations, buyers could underwrite on revenue multiples rather than ego, and an asset you can model is an asset a committee can approve. Third, US sports leagues opened to private equity, which legitimised the category for everyone else.

The result is that a club is now assessed like any other operating business with regulatory overlay. What people underestimate is how much of that overlay is people-based. The playing and coaching staff are the revenue engine, and for any non-UK signing that engine runs through the immigration system. A buyer who treats squad mobility as an afterthought has mispriced the asset.

Private equity firms, specialist funds and family offices are becoming more active in sports ownership. How is the growing presence of institutional capital changing the investment landscape and competitive dynamics?

Institutional money changes behaviour more than it changes prices. Family offices buy for the next generation and hold; private equity buys to a fund clock and needs an exit, which forces leagues to build liquidity mechanisms they previously resisted. You see it in the move from “trophy buyer” to “platform builder”, where the same buyer acquires several clubs to share scouting, data and commercial infrastructure.

For competitive dynamics, the consequence is professionalisation of the back office (or rather the board room in UK parlance!), and that includes compliance. As an example from my world, when a fund owns the club, the sponsor licence sits inside a regulated portfolio, and a licence suspension is no longer an HR inconvenience, it is a portfolio-level event that can freeze recruitment across a transfer window. It would take quite a severe failing to have a sponsor licence suspended, however it is something that the hierarchy of a club is now acutely aware of and monitors.

Liquidity has become a major concern for investors entering sports assets. What structures or solutions are emerging to provide greater flexibility and exit opportunities for minority investors?

This sits slightly outside my lane, so I’ll be brief and stick to what’s observable. The structures emerging are familiar from private markets transplanted into sport: GP-led continuation vehicles, preferred equity with a defined return ahead of the ordinary shares, and structured minority stakes with contractual exit triggers rather than a hope of a future trade sale. Some US leagues have gone further and approved dedicated funds permitted to hold passive stakes across multiple franchises, which creates something closer to a secondary market.

The honest position is that liquidity in sport remains poor relative to the valuations being paid. Most of these solutions manage the timing of an exit rather than guarantee one. An investor relying on a continuation fund or a drag mechanism should test whether the documented exit actually clears league ownership rules, because a contractual right to sell is worth little if the buyer cannot be approved.

Governance is increasingly under scrutiny across clubs, leagues and sports organisations. What governance standards do sophisticated investors now expect before committing capital?

Governance has moved from box-ticking to a deal condition. Sophisticated investors now expect a genuine board with independent voices, clean separation between owner and club accounts, documented related-party controls, and a credible compliance function rather than a part-time afterthought. In English football the Independent Football Regulator has hard-coded much of this: from 2026 clubs in the top five tiers face a statutory licensing regime, a strengthened owners’ and directors’ suitability test, and a regulator that has signalled an interventionist stance and shares information with the FCA.

The piece buyers consistently under-scope is immigration compliance, and it belongs squarely in governance. A Home Office sponsor licence carries reporting duties, record-keeping obligations and a real risk of suspension or revocation if the club’s systems are weak. I’d expect any serious acquirer to run a sponsor licence and right-to-work audit in due diligence alongside the financial and legal review. A revoked licence doesn’t just cost a fine, it stops you signing players.

Minority ownership stakes are becoming a preferred route into sports investing. What rights, protections and legal considerations should investors focus on when evaluating these opportunities?

This is well outside my practice area, I will leave this to my more qualified colleagues!

Women’s sport is attracting unprecedented investor interest and rising valuations. Where do you see the most compelling opportunities, and what makes women’s sport a distinct investment proposition?

This is the most interesting part of the market and the numbers back it. Average NWSL franchise valuations have run from roughly $500 million collectively a few years ago to around $1.5 billion, with individual expansion fees reaching $165 million for Atlanta against $2 million paid in San Diego five years earlier. England’s WSL is expanding and professionalising while still trading at a discount to men’s football, which is precisely the entry point early movers want.

What makes it distinct is that you are buying growth rather than a mature annuity, with valuations driven heavily by stadium control and media-rights trajectory rather than current profit. From my side, expansion has a mobility dimension people miss: scaling the women’s game means bringing in overseas players and coaches, and the visa route runs through the same International Sportsperson framework and governing-body endorsement system as the men’s game, with its own criteria. Build the immigration pathway into the investment thesis rather than discovering it after completion.

How are lending, private credit and structured finance solutions reshaping the sports sector, and what opportunities do they create for investors who may not wish to take direct equity exposure?

Again, not my area.

As valuations continue to rise across major leagues and franchises, where do you see the best value opportunities today: established leagues, emerging competitions, sports technology, infrastructure or media rights?

Genuinely a matter of view rather than law, so take this as just my opinion. The established leagues are largely already fully priced, and entering at the top of that cycle is a bet on multiple expansion continuing rather than on value. The better risk-adjusted opportunities sit at the edges: women’s sport for the growth runway, sports technology and data because it scales without the regulatory drag of owning a club, and infrastructure where stadium control has repeatedly proven the single biggest driver of franchise value.

There is also the ‘sleeping giants’ argument, where you look for underperforming teams that have a big delta between their current and potential standards and overall valuation. The case study for this is Wrexham FC, a once big club that had fallen on hard times, now bigger than ever thanks to shrewd investment, careful management, and a little bit of Hollywood publicity!

Media rights are the asset underneath all of it and the one I’d watch most closely, because every valuation in the sector is ultimately a leveraged bet on the next rights cycle. If you want the upside of the sector without buying a club and inheriting its compliance and immigration obligations, the adjacent plays, technology, infrastructure, credit, are where I’d look first. But this is outside my professional lane and others on the panel will model it better than I can.

What are the key legal, tax and regulatory challenges facing sports investors, particularly in cross border transactions involving private equity, family offices and institutional capital?

This is where the people dimension becomes a hard cost rather than a footnote. Cross-border sports deals layer several regimes at once: league ownership approval, the new statutory regulator in English football, competition and foreign-investment screening, tax structuring across jurisdictions, and immigration. Buyers model the first four and routinely underprice the last.

The immigration exposure is concrete. every non-UK / Irish player and coach needs a governing-body endorsement and an International Sportsperson visa, sponsored by a club holding a valid Home Office licence. The endorsement criteria changes annually, the FA has tightened compliance for 2026/27, and league bandings shift in ways that change whether a target player even qualifies. A deal thesis built on signing a particular calibre of overseas talent can fail on immigration grounds the buyer never tested pre acquisition.

Looking ahead over the next five years, what do you believe will be the biggest trends shaping sports investment, and how will the sector continue to mature as an institutional asset class?

Three trends. First, institutionalisation completes: dedicated sports funds, secondary markets and continuation vehicles become normal, and “sports” settles in as a recognised allocation rather than a curiosity. Second, regulation hardens and converges. England’s Independent Football Regulator is the leading edge, but statutory oversight of ownership, finance and suitability is the direction of travel, and it raises the compliance bar for every buyer. Third, the women’s game matures from growth story to a genuine asset class of its own.

Underneath all three, the unglamorous infrastructure of ownership, governance, compliance and mobility becomes a differentiator rather than an afterthought. As the sector matures, the edge moves from who can pay the most to who can operate the asset properly. For my part of that, the constraint that keeps reappearing is talent mobility: a maturing institutional asset class still cannot freely move its core workforce across borders, and the owners who plan for that will outperform the ones who treat it as paperwork.

Chris Harber’s Citywealth Leaders List profile

Boyes Turner’s Citywealth Leaders List profile

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