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I don’t really know or care much about soccer, so I’ll just comment on sportswashing.
Why do billionaires want to buy sports teams?
Maybe they expect to make money through revenue or through a later sale. Or slapping advertising on jerseys will benefit their brand. Not the supermarket sort of branding, since football fans (hopefully) aren’t basing their oil purchases on that, but something more valuable. Prestige, whether among outsiders or among rival tycoons. The same rat race which gets people to buy gold-plated toilets.
So if someone you hate expects to benefit from something…wanting to keep it from them is pretty normal.
As an aside, distrust of Qatari money predates the World Cup LGBT push. I seem to recall complaints back when they were awarded the World Cup, but it was about abusing migrant labor rather than gender politics. The wiki article says this goes back to at least 2012. But there’s plenty more to complain about. Sharia and enshrined Islam for the Bush-era neocons. Old fashioned sex discrimination for the women. Corporal and capital punishment for the bleeding-hearts. Child abuse and camel jockeys for the, uh, luddites?
Point is: It’s easy for people to care about one or more of these things. Even Norf FC fans. From there, the resulting behavior can be explained by principled opposition, or just by spite.
Because billionaires are not Ayn Randian heroes as superior to ordinary men as ordinary men are superior to bugs, but normies, only with big pile of money.
Because they love sports like every normie does and can, unlike poor normies, really indulge their passion.
It is hard to accept, but sometimes the simplest explanation is the real one.
See this classic from The eXile excommunicating Tom Clancy from the ranks of war nerds ;-)
It is written tongue in cheek, Gary Brecher knows well it is not so easy to be warlord or condottiero in modern degenerate age, but not impossible.
For example, this guy managed to change the course of world history (well, most probably not exactly as he wished) at cost of few million bucks.
Wonder what this Brecher guy thinks of Frank Amodeo.
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Or because sports teams are one of the most unobtainable status icons of wealth. There are only 30 NBA teams, only 32 NFL teams. Only so many Premier League teams, or clubs with the cachet of ManU.
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It's very smart:
tax implications
for fun (free tickets, mingling with players)
bragging rights , branding
better returns than almost any asset class
The barriers to entry are obviously very high , even for partial ownership. Like Bay Area real estate, which is also great, it seems to be investments that have very high barriers to entry, tend to be among the best, plus scarcity. There is only one "Lakers". Bay Area homes are great and the returns are like a perfect smooth chart that beats the S&P 500, but REIT funds are much worse by comparison, but way easier for regular people to invest.
The reasons these investments have done so well is that they act like a call option on income inequality. Today there are more billionaires than ever chasing the same number of teams.
One interesting thing about income inequality is that it tends to increase as time goes on then massively resetting in times of crisis. The last reset was over 75 years ago in the United States, but of course other countries have had them much more recently.
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There are a bunch of reasons.
Owning the team gives them bragging rights of course. But it also gives them access to the best seats, corporate boxes, and players.
If a client is playing hardball in negotiations they can treat them to the best seats at the game followed by beer with the star players.
Also good seats often have face values below reporting limits but street values in the thousands. So you can give them away as legal bribes to politicians, police chiefs, or whoever.
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