China enters the ball game
That seems an exaggerated claim to make about a modest 20%, €45 million, stake in Atletico Madrid. After all, Atletico sold Diego Costa for almost that amount last summer, even if half the money went to third parties.
However, the Dalian Wanda Group is no ordinary investor and its chairman and founder Wang Jianlin is no common or garden multi-billionaire.
As the company announced their new investment in football, the chairman also revealed that he’d met Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to discuss an investment worth more than €3 billion. Wang is China’s second-richest man, and the most powerful businessman in the country. He is also hand-in-glove with the government — whose hand and whose glove depends on the circumstances and your point of view.
Relations between Spain and China have not been smooth recently, a worry for the Spanish as China holds about €25 billion of Spanish debt. But beyond that, Dalian Wanda is becoming a global company, and aims to become a global brand.
The football card is an obvious one, particularly as the company has a history of involvement in the sport. Dalian is a port city of some seven million people in north-east China and the company helped the city government establish a football club in 1994. Six years later Wang Jianlin pulled the plug, blaming bribery and match-fixing, but he has since returned to football sponsorship, funding the Chinese Super League and the China Future Football Stars programme.
As well as Wanda taking a stake in Atletico, it has been agreed that each will invest €15m to build a training centre for young players in Madrid. They have also agreed to open three football schools in China, and Atletico have committed to an annual summer tour.
The Atletico investment is “purely for the public good”, said Wang last week. “I have a passion for football. As long as three or five players could compete in first-tier European football clubs in the future, Wanda isn’t wasting money in this deal.”
Note the plural.
Wanda may well increase their investment in Atletico, but the signs are that the company wants to buy a stake, at least, elsewhere. A Premier League club would be the most obvious target, because of the money in English football, because of its huge popularity in China and south-east Asia, and because it’s much easier to buy into the Premier League than, say, the Bundesliga,
Which club? One might be West Ham, close to London’s financial centre and shortly to move into a splendid new stadium. Everton could be another option. But the most likely target, perhaps even for a complete takeover, may be Southampton.
Last January, there were rumours of a Dalian interest, and the club certainly fits the bill: on the up, newly ambitious and successful, a big catchment area with a modern stadium that can be expanded. Southampton’s excellent reputation for developing young players would also be an attraction.
Southampton is not an obvious brand like Madrid. But against that, there is one huge economic interest. Like Dalian, Southampton is a port city. Like other ports, it has many fewer dockworkers than before but around 12,000 people are employed directly or indirectly. Trade has expanded enormously, and much of it involves China. As much as 45% of the UK’s deep sea trade with the far east now passes through Southampton.
Foreign ownership of European clubs is usually assumed to be about prestige and image, and so it is — but not exclusively. It is also about money and “global reach”.
Atletico is the first proper Chinese venture into European football, ignoring Carson Yeung’s farce at Birmingham. Peter Lim, Valencia’s new owner, is from Singapore.
Dalian almost certainly want to become a force in football, as they are in property, tourism and entertainment. Wang Jianlin says he wants to rival Hollywood in the film industry.
Rivalling Real Madrid and Barcelona, and quite possibly the Premier League as well, should be just to his taste.
