Half of the Premier League is now in some form of multi-club ownership (MCO). But those clubs are at the top of the food chain and would not have experience of being the poorer relative.<\/p>\n
The City Football Group has Manchester City<\/a> as its core club, and full control of teams in Italy, France, Brazil, Australia, Uruguay and Belgium. It also owns 47% of Girona in Spain.<\/p>\n Red Bull is a majority owner of teams in Germany, Austria, the United States and Brazil, with minority stakes in other clubs, including Leeds United<\/a>.<\/p>\n These are major football operations, MCO behemoths. Players and managers will move between entities. It is like an employee getting promoted through a multi-national company.<\/p>\n Head coach Jesse Marsch, for instance, went from New York Red Bulls to Salzburg to Leipzig. But never in the middle of a season.<\/p>\n Other MCOs are set up share ideas and enjoy relative growth, such as Tony Bloom’s interest in Brighton<\/a>, Union Saint-Gilloise, Hearts and Melbourne Victory.<\/p>\n Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos owns 100% of Nice and Swiss club FC Lausanne-Sport, but only 28.94% of Manchester United<\/a>. But his decisive influence in football operations at Old Trafford is enough to trigger one of Uefa’s indicators of an MCO.<\/p>\n Chelsea<\/a> and Strasbourg’s two-club MCO is “unique”, football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport. <\/p>\n While most MCOs tend to be football focused, he added BlueCo is more of a hedge-fund strategy. That means bringing in assets that are low value and selling them on high returns. <\/p>\n “Strasbourg are perhaps slightly adrift in the sense they are seen as a holding area of talent that perhaps Chelsea<\/a> want to bring to the club at a later point,” said Maguire. <\/p>\n “You could argue that’s the case with Rosenior, to get experience at another part of the Chelsea<\/a> empire.<\/p>\n “BlueCo target younger players, they put them on long-term contracts. The players deliver and the value of the player is locked in.”<\/p>\n