A potential earthquake for multiclub ownership
All for nothing? Crystal Palace won the FA Cup earlier this year © PA Wire/PA Images
Yesterday Uefa issued its long-awaited ruling on whether Crystal Palace would be allowed to compete in next season’s Europa League. The decision to eject the Premier League team is a bitter blow for fans, players and shareholders, and is likely to have ramifications across European football.
The south London club qualified after winning the FA Cup, the first major trophy in its history. But celebrations were cut short when Uefa raised concerns about the club’s ownership structure.
At the time, John Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings held around 43 per cent of Palace (a stake since sold to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson). Eagle also owns Olympique Lyonnais, who qualified for the Europa League thanks to a last-minute goal on the final day of the season.
Uefa decided the two clubs breached rules on multiclub ownership as of the March 1 deadline. Then, Palace were in the FA Cup’s fifth round, long shots to win. Lyon were facing provisional relegation from Ligue 1 due to financial problems that would have barred them from Europe.
Textor and fellow shareholders — Apollo co-founder Josh Harris, Blackstone executive David Blitzer and chair Steve Parish — argued there was no conflict. Textor, they said, lacked decisive influence. Uefa disagreed.
The rules aim to stop two clubs under the same control from meeting in Uefa competitions — a moot point now that Textor has exited Palace. But the March 1 deadline for ownership changes has been upheld.
The verdict (appealable to the Court of Arbitration for Sport) follows previous rulings ejecting a Mexican club from the Club World Cup and an Irish one from the Europa Conference — both upheld by CAS.
These moves mark a tightening of the rules, with serious implications for multiclub ownership.
Owners must now decide by February which club(s) to place in a blind trust, the short-term fix for managing conflicts.
They might even start planning which team to push towards which competition — potentially compromising domestic leagues. Uefa may have protected its tournaments’ integrity, but opened a can of worms at home.
The broader question is whether this will cool interest in multiclub investment. The impact will be felt far beyond south London.