Everton will find themselves as part of a ‘timeshare’ initiative should they be taken over by 777 Partners as expected.
That’s according to Corriere dello Sport, who cover the impending takeover at Goodison Park today following the announcement that Farhad Moshiri intends to sell to the group yesterday.
Moshiri has been looking for further investment at Everton for several months amid the growing cost of building the stadium at Bramley Moore dock and keeping the Toffees afloat.
It appears that he has now decided to cut ties and announced yesterday that he has reached an agreement with 777 Partners to sell his shares to them.
The American Fund are part of a growing trend of investment groups in football who own several clubs around the world and currently own sides in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Brazil.
The Italian side is Genoa, leading CDS to cover the takeover today and state that 777 Partners are taking ‘an important step towards the construction of a multi-ownership structure’ with their latest acquisition.
They say it will be up to them to ‘relaunch ambitions’ at Goodison Park after Moshiri’s disappointing reign but that will be a ‘demanding challenge’ and also not their primary aim.
They’re more interested in creating a ‘timeshare in football’ by owning various clubs and the advantages that come with that.
The newspaper believes those advantages includes ‘an expanded player pool‘, satellite clubs which can ‘act as a nursery’ and even the creation of an ‘internal market’ managed by the holding company that can ‘increase the value of footballers’.
There’s also the ‘centralisation of sponsor management’ through all of the clubs, while the owners themselves create ‘financial diversification’.
The latter is seen as more of a benefit for the owners who, like an investor, create a diversified investment portfolio that can compensate for unexpected drops in value of one security with the appreciation of others. You’d imagine Everton, with their Premier League money, would be one such asset for smaller sides like Hertha Berlin and Standard Liege.
CDS finish by asking ‘what can Genoa expect?’ but the answer is ‘not much immediately’. They believe a ‘timeshare’ such as this could be good as it strengthens the shareholder and thus increases ‘operation potential’.
The feeling, though, is that the move is very much one which strengthens the buyer and not the club being bought, a worrying idea for a club so demonstrably weak as Everton at this moment in time.
