Winging it

WILL the Reds go red? Everbright, a Chinese state-backed financial conglomerate, is reportedly keen to buy Liverpool Football Club, one of the sport’s most celebrated names. If it were to happen, it would be the biggest in a series of recent investments made by mainland firms in European football (see chart). Some think such moves will redraw the sporting map. Arsène Wenger, manager of Arsenal, a London club, has said that China has the financial wherewithal to “move a whole league of Europe to China”.

The tally of Chinese investment in foreign football clubs since January of last year now stands at $2 billion, according to Rhodium Group, a consulting firm. The sums keep growing. The biggest deal yet was the takeover of AC Milan for $820m by a mainland consortium, announced on July 5th. Chinese money has also cascaded towards individual footballers, who often join the world’s best paid. The latest jaw-dropping deal was Shanghai SIPG’s signing of Givanildo Vieira de Sousa, a Brazilian star known as Hulk, in June for $61m.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, a lifelong football fan, approves. He wants to build a domestic sports industry worth $850 billion by 2025. His other goals are for China to host the World Cup by 2030 and win it soon after. The bureaucracy has swung into action, issuing 50-point policy plans and offering tax breaks and other inducements to firms investing in the game.

Many have responded, with Chinese investors in football ranging from the business elite to the relatively unknown. Some businessmen may be mindful of the benefits of being seen to invest in the state’s declared priorities during Mr Xi’s feared anti-corruption campaign. The new owner of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Guo Guangchang, the boss of Fosun Group, for instance, was briefly detained by police last December before being released with no charges a few days later. Foreign football clubs also offer investors a state-sanctioned way to move money out of China, and a hedge against the falling yuan.

Many of those buying clubs abroad are also spending big on football back home. The knowledge gleaned from inspecting the way in which European clubs develop talent should eventually boost skills on pitches in China, where playing standards have long been poor. The investment is not a case of blind adoration for European football, argues Simon Chadwick of Coventry University Business School, but is rather quite strategic.

Insiders who know Liverpool FC are playing down the likelihood of an imminent deal, but the club’s owners may be swayed by events 50km away from Anfield, its home. Manchester City, of which 13% is owned by a consortium led by China Media Capital (CMC), a venture-capital firm with a strong presence in Chinese media, is well placed to lift its profile in a vast, untapped football market. Manchester City has recently agreed a deal to set up a satellite club in China.

Analysts based in China tend to think that the string of purchases represents a bubble. The nation is likely to have less success in spending its way to the top in football than it has had in the Olympics, says Mark Dreyer of China Sports Insider, an industry blog. Corruption now is not as bad as in the old days of “black ball” scandals, when many matches were fixed. Still, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which hosts betting on a range of sports, remains suspicious and does not allow bets on Chinese football matches.

And the problem with state backing is that it could easily lead to the sort of industrial policies that have led to overinvestment and underperformance in several other Chinese industries. The chances of China becoming a global chip-making superpower, for example, are slim, even though it plans to spend over $100 billion buying semiconductor firms and technologies, said Bain & Company, a consultancy, in a recent study. A report drawing similar conclusions about China’s ambitions in football could soon be on its way.