The New Football Investment Market Is Below the Top Leagues

For years, multi-club ownership was largely associated with football empires. Manchester City sat at the centre of a global network. Red Bull connected Salzburg, Leipzig and other clubs through a common sporting philosophy. Smaller clubs often existed within a hierarchy, providing access to players, markets and development opportunities.

But another model is emerging. Instead of starting with one giant club and building downward, investors are beginning to build from the lower leagues upward. The clubs are smaller. The ambitions are not.

Why Are Investors Buying Lower-League Football Clubs?

Lower-league football offers something that Europe's biggest clubs cannot: relatively inexpensive access to established football infrastructure. A third- or fourth-tier club can already have a historic identity, stadium, academy, local fanbase, commercial relationships and a position within a major football market.

What it often lacks is modern infrastructure. That creates an investment opportunity. Rather than paying hundreds of millions for an established elite club, investors can acquire several smaller clubs and improve the systems around them: recruitment, data, ticketing, sponsorship, digital engagement, hospitality and player development.

The objective is not necessarily to turn every club into a Champions League team. It is to make the underlying organisation more efficient and valuable.

What Is Horizontal Multi-Club Ownership?

Estrella Football Group is one of the clearest examples of this emerging approach. The group launched in 2025 with what it calls Horizontal Multi-Club Ownership (HMCO). Unlike the traditional model, there is no flagship club sitting above the rest of the portfolio.

Estrella's clubs are intended to retain their own identities and local structures while sharing technology, expertise, commercial resources and operational infrastructure. Its current portfolio includes Cascais SAD and Carvoeiro United in Portugal, alongside Aurora Pro Patria 1919 in Italy. In July 2026, Estrella acquired 51% of Pro Patria, adding a historic Italian club to its network.

The distinction is important. The objective isn't simply to own three football clubs. It is to create a system in which three relatively small clubs can collectively access capabilities that none of them could easily build alone.

How Lower-League Clubs Can Benefit From Shared Infrastructure

The economic logic becomes clearer when the focus moves away from the players and onto the organisation. A fourth-tier club may not be able to justify investing heavily in its own CRM system, data infrastructure, scouting technology or sophisticated commercial operation. A network of 20 clubs potentially can.

Estrella has already started building this infrastructure. Its ClubOS platform is designed as a shared technology layer, while its partnership with Fever brings a common ticketing and fan-engagement system across its clubs. The individual club remains small. The infrastructure around it doesn't have to be. That is where the potential network effect lies.

Club Underdog Is Building Another Lower-League Football Network

Estrella isn't the only investor testing the model.

North Sixth Group's Club Underdog has assembled a portfolio that includes Italian clubs Campobasso and Ascoli, England's Dagenham & Redbridge and FC Locarno in Switzerland. Its investment thesis is explicitly focused on acquiring clubs where operational improvement and sporting development can create additional value.

Dagenham & Redbridge is particularly revealing. Club Underdog acquired a controlling interest in the English National League club in 2024. The fifth-tier club became another piece of a broader portfolio rather than a standalone investment.

Campobasso Tried the Wrexham Formula

Campobasso is one of the most visible examples of the North Sixth Group's Club Underdog model. North Sixth acquired the Italian club in 2022 after it had restarted in Serie D, with Hollywood couple Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa joining the ownership group. The club subsequently achieved back-to-back promotions and returned to Serie C, giving the investment an early sporting success story.

The owners also tried to replicate another part of the Wrexham formula: turning the club itself into entertainment. After Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney transformed Wrexham's rise into a global story through Welcome to Wrexham, Consuelos and Ripa became the subjects of Running with the Wolves, a four-part ESPN docuseries released in 2025 that followed their experience as Campobasso owners.

The problem was reach. While Running with the Wolves was available through Disney+ and Hulu in the United States, its international distribution was far more limited. JustWatch currently lists the series on Disney+ in the U.S., without comparable availability across major European markets.

That creates an important distinction between Campobasso and Wrexham. A documentary can amplify a football club only if audiences can actually watch it. Campobasso produced the sporting narrative, promotions, ownership change and a return to professional football — but Running with the Wolves never achieved the same international distribution or cultural reach as Welcome to Wrexham.

Campobasso therefore illustrates both sides of the lower-league investment model: sporting progress can create value, but turning that progress into a global football brand requires an audience , and access to that audience.

How Brentford Is Using a Lower-League Club in Spain

A similar logic can be seen in Spain. Brentford's ownership group created Best Intentions Analytics, which acquired 100% of Mérida AD, a club competing in Spain's third tier. Mérida provides an interesting example because the value proposition is not simply financial.

The club can benefit from the data-driven recruitment and performance expertise associated with Brentford's broader football operation. The idea is straightforward: a smaller club does not necessarily need the budget of a Premier League club if it can gain access to some of the knowledge and systems used by one.

Why Italy Is Becoming a Particularly Interesting Market

Italy has many characteristics that make it attractive to this type of investment. The country has hundreds of clubs with significant local histories, established fanbases and football infrastructure, but enormous differences in financial resources between the top divisions and the lower pyramid.

Aurora Pro Patria is a good example. Founded in 1919 and with a history in Serie A, Pro Patria was competing in Serie D when Estrella acquired its majority stake in 2026.

The case illustrates the attraction of the fallen club: a team with an existing football identity and history, but operating significantly below its historical level. For an investor, the opportunity is not necessarily to create something from nothing. It is to ask what happens when an established football organisation receives modern capital, technology and management.

What Are the Risks of Lower-League Multi-Club Ownership?

The model is far from guaranteed. Lower-league football comes with financial, regulatory and operational complexity. Stadium agreements can be complicated, financial reporting can vary and historic clubs can carry liabilities that are not immediately visible.

Estrella's proposed investment in Scottish club Greenock Morton ultimately collapsed in 2026 after the group said due diligence uncovered financial information that changed its assessment of the opportunity.

There is also a sporting problem. Promotion changes everything. In Italy, for example, ownership rules restrict control of multiple professional clubs, meaning an investment in a Serie D club can become structurally complicated if that club reaches the professional divisions.

Growth is therefore not simply an objective. It can also create new ownership and regulatory problems.

The Future of Multi-Club Ownership May Be Smaller Clubs, Not Bigger Ones

Football's first multi-club era was largely about building empires around elite teams. The next one could look very different. Investors may increasingly see lower-league football not as the bottom of the pyramid, but as a fragmented market of underdeveloped football assets.

The opportunity is not necessarily to buy the biggest club available. It may be to find several clubs where the gap between their current infrastructure and their potential value is large enough to justify investment.

Estrella is testing that thesis in Portugal and Italy. Club Underdog is pursuing a similar approach across several lower divisions. Brentford's ownership group is applying its own expertise to a Spanish third-tier club.

Different investors. Different structures, but the underlying idea is increasingly similar: You don't need one giant football club to build a valuable football network. You may just need enough smaller ones and the infrastructure to connect them.