Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group have been linked with a potential acquisition of Spanish side Malaga. FSG have been in the market to acquire another team for the last 12 months.
On Saturday, The Athletic reported that FSG had sent a delegation over to Spain to visit the facilities of the Segunda División side as part of due diligence being carried out, with the Reds owners aiming to find a club to add to their football portfolio, something that formed a key part of the deal to bring Michael Edwards back into the fold as CEO of FSG’s football operations.
Last year FSG looked at a move to acquire French side Bordeaux, albeit a deal that arrived late in the day and one that was opportunistic. Bordeaux eventually fell into bankruptcy and slid down to the fourth tier, with the precarious nature of French football’s broadcast deal and issues around stadium ownership among the reasons why they walked away.
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Malaga have been open to a sale for some time, and many investor groups have kicked the tyres on the second tier Spanish side during that period, including actor Antonio Banderas and 11% owners of FSG, RedBird Capital Partners
RedBird, who took a stake in FSG back in 2021 in a £533million deal and who have since acquired a majority shareholding in storied Italian giants AC Milan, looked at a deal for Malaga in May of 2021, with the New York-based firm, founded and run by Gerry Cardinale, taking a small stake of 600 shares at a value of £15,500 so that they could have a seat at the table to allow themselves the chance to take part in an acquisition should the opportunity arise.
That requirement was due to the fact that an ownership wrangle between 49% shareholders Blue Bay Hotels, and 51% majority owner, Sheikh Abdullah ben Nasser Al Thani, saw a court-appointed administrator taking charge of the running of the club while a resolution to the situation was sought. With the club heavily in debt, and in the throes of a pandemic that only served to exacerbate an already bad situation, guarantees were sought ahead of them competing in the 2021/22 season.
For that the club needed to raise some capital, and one of the stipulations set out from the administrator was that any capital injection received must come from an individual or business that holds a shareholding at the club and can sit on the board and be present at shareholder meetings. That resulted in the RedBird stake.
But a full takeover never happened, and RedBird instead shifted its focus to purchasing the shareholding of Elliott Management in AC Milan.
RedBird and FSG are well aligned. Cardinale is seen as one of the sport, media and entertainment industry’s top dealmakers, and the RedBird investment portfolio, which also includes full ownership of French Ligue1 side Toulouse since 2020, has grown considerably even since the stake purchase in FSG.
RedBird’s due diligence around the purchase of Toulouse was thorough. They looked at over 80 clubs around the world, a process that was aided by former Liverpool sporting director Damien Comolli, who serves as Toulouse chairman presently. What that did was focus on the pros and cons of each team, looking at such things from the size of the fan base, the size of the market, the potential for growth, the state of the academy, the debt structure, as well as things like demographics and location. Toulouse was seen as highly investible, but so was Malaga.
Malaga is a club that was a Champions League quarter-finalist in 2013, buoyed by major investment from Al Thani who purchased players such as Ruud van Nistelrooy, Isco, Jeremy Toulalan and Santi Cazorla.
It has a strong academy, with in-demand, Liverpool-linked Bournemouth defender Dean Huijsen, 19, having spent six years there from 2015 to 2021.
They have a 30,000-capacity stadium, although it is owned by the local government, and the city has a population of 592,000, the largest in Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. It is a historic city that attracts tourists in large numbers and that is something that investors feel can be leveraged. Not to mention that the club’s La Rosaleda home is currently undergoing a revamp having been selected as one of the host stadiums for the 2030 FIFA World Cup, another potential win for any new investors that they could leverage.
The club also has a strong scouting network across Europe, and tapping into that and developing hand-in-hand with Liverpool and FSG’s data-driven approach, with Edwards at the forefront, is something that will be of great appeal to FSG as they seek to be more efficient in the market at a time of increased prices but far higher administrative costs.
Liverpool will seek to try and find the same link to talent as Manchester City have done with Girona, or Brighton & Hove Albion have done with Union Saint-Gilloise, clubs that form part of a multi-club model.
Sources the ECHO has spoken to have confirmed the interest in FSG in taking a deeper dive into Malaga, but they remain alert to opportunities in Europe and beyond, with the group having identified clubs using a similar strategy as RedBird. The fact that RedBird already have a huge dossier of investible clubs, including Malaga, means that some of this leg work will have already been done, and that will be helpful given that FSG may face some competition.
Paris Saint-Germain owners Qatar Sports Investments are reportedly eyeing Malaga as an opportunity, but that could cause some interesting developments in itself given that US investment firm Arctos Sports Partners own 12.5% of PSG, while also holding a single-digit percentage stake in FSG, one that was concluded during the pandemic.
Getting a deal done might be a little more complex than normal, though, with Malaga mired in problems for a number of years.
Champions League quarter finalists in 2013, three years after the club was bought by Al Thani where heavy investment in the playing squad arrived, the years that have followed has seen financial chaos unravel at La Rosaleda, the club unable to sustain their heavy spending and sliding down into the Segunda División by 2018.
Legal issues have become a central theme for Malaga over the last five years after charges were brought against Al Thani in 2020 over his alleged role in the misappropriation of funds. Al Thani has always maintained his innocence.
Those charges saw him removed as president for an initial six months by a Spanish regional court in 2020 A judicial administrator of the club, José María Muñoz, has been in situ since then to oversee the running of the club as the legal wrangling between Al Thani and the Blue Bay continues.
Al Thani and Blue Bay faced off in court back in 2019 over a contractual dispute relating to 2013, a time when Malaga were in need of heavy investment to cope with their mounting debts on the back of their pursuit of success.
A judge in 2019 issued that 97% of the club's shares, which were under the control of Al Thani, should be returned to the firm that Al Thani and Blue Bay co-owned, NAS Spain, where the Malaga owner and Blue Bay had a shareholding of 51% and 49% respectively.
Al Thani appealed and the legal process has continued, leading to the appointment of a judicial administrator to find a way forward for the club. But having been in ownership limbo since 2025, it is likely that Malaga fans would welcome the chance of a fresh start, and that would also take out of the equation another potential headache that comes with acquiring teams as part of a multi-club model: the ire of fans.
