Manchester United, Qatar’s offer shakes European football: the situation – Corriere.it

Billionaire offers for the big names in the Premier League. English football offers the most attractive (and richest) entertainment in the world, which is why its main teams appeal to everyone. From the Liverpool to the Tottenhamwithout forgetting of course the Manchester United, for which a real auction is underway that could lead to international intrigue. Two protagonists: on the one hand the British entrepreneur Sir Jim Ratcliffe, owner of the chemical giant Ineos. On the other the sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thanithird son of the Emir of Qatar, which put around 6 billion euros on the plate. A deal of this size would represent the largest acquisition ever of a professional sports team, breaking the record of $4.65 billion paid by Walton-Pinner for the Denver Broncos in American football.

The intrigue

But the candidacy of Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani cannot go unnoticed. The sheikh said the funds will come from the Nine Two Foundation, an entity for which there is little public documentation and whose wealth is linked to the QIB (the Qatar Islamic Bank), which in turn is 50% owned by the Qatari Investment Authority, or the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. The president of the Qatar Islamic Bank is the son of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the powerful former emir of Qatar who was also head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. And Sheikh Jassim’s brother i.e. Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,
the current emir of Qatar as well as owner of the PSG. So Qatar already has a great team in European football and the UEFA statute is clear: two clubs with the same owner cannot play the same competition. Since Manchester United and PSG could face each other in the Champions League, Jassim will have to prove that there is no overlap between him and the Qatari investment fund. In short, if his offer is accepted, he will have to convince European regulators that his funds do not come from the state of Qatar. Not an easy undertaking considering his complex network of connections with state funds and the kinship that binds him to the current head of the country.

Not just football: eyes on the NBA too

But soccer is not the only sport that attracts interest from the Gulf states. The NBA is also coveted by the Qatari Investment Authority, that may find the way paved. That’s because the league’s Board of Governors changed the rules on franchise ownership to allow sovereign wealth funds to buy 20% of the teams. In the past weeks Bloomberg reported that investors in the QIA and the Mubadala Investment Company (UAE sovereign wealth fund) have indicated their intention to acquire a share of the New York Knicks, one of the most iconic realities. James Dolan, the current controversial owner of the team, would in fact be willing to sell a minority stake. It would not be the first case of foreign investment in the NBA: the Indian businessman Vivek Ranadive became the first person born outside North America to own a majority stake in a franchise when he purchased the Sacramento Kings in 2013
. Most recently, the Taiwanese-Canadian billionaire and co-founder of Alibaba Joe Tsai caused a sensation when in 2019 he got his hands on Brooklyn Nets for $2.35 billion, sparking fierce controversy over its ties to the Communist Party of China (CPC).