"Regulate to Grow” Believes Behdad Eghbali Pushes for New Rules to Unlock Billions in European Football

A geopolitical crisis is never an isolated event. It affects every country while disrupting operations at varied sectors. From trade disruptions and currency depreciation to fuel inflation. One hidden aspect could be the football clubs' ownership, which gets affected too due to the absence of resilient guidelines.

Roman Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea F.C. to Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly turned out to be a perfect example to demonstrate how the Russia-Ukraine War has caused geopolitical sanctions to directly interfere with football ownership and operations, which gives the only way forward in terms of transparent and stable regulation in European football.

Behdad Eghbali, the co-leader of Clearlake, stated on Thursday at the CAA World Congress of Sports that while he generally dislikes excessive regulation, he believes that increased regulatory oversight throughout European soccer would attract new investment, particularly for multi-club ownership strategies.

“We do think there needs to be more kind of regulatory reform to enable multi-club [ownership],” Eghbali said. “We do think there’s going to be a lot of capital invested if that reform happens in European football, and that’s going to grow the game.”

“The change wasn’t the club’s decision, for reasons I can’t speak about legally. I think the reasons will become kind of clear in due course. But no, it’s not a change we wanted to make,” Eghbali said. “It’s a change that’s had a bit of a negative impact on the season, when you’re changing systems and personnel. And it’s one we’ve got to fight out our way out of.”