Our client, a state-owned organisation, indirectly owned a minority stake in one of the most iconic football clubs in France. It required a valuation of its stake in the context of the potential disposal of its asset.
The football industry is unique. Most European football clubs are structurally loss-making and rely on the sale of their main assets (the players) to balance their budgets. With this in mind, many valuation methodologies are not applicable. We therefore applied the NAV method and the transaction multiples method. It is worth noting that the valuation of a football club also depends on several factors unable to be measured such as (i) sporting results, (ii) the history and the region of the club and (iii) the soft power policies of some countries, as well as certain real estate considerations (stadium / ownership of the headquarters).