Massie-Taylor remembers how low the bar was to buy into the Prem in his first few, stressful years. “It was ‘do you exist, have you got a criminal record, do you actually have any money?,” he says.<\/p>\n
But Red Bull’s arrival, sealed and delivered in August 2025,<\/a> marked a sea change.<\/p>\n Since then Black Knight – the owners of Premier League side Bournemouth – have bought up Exeter Chiefs, <\/a>billionaire industrialist Sir James Dyson has taken a 50% share of Bath <\/a>and financier Steve Zander has made a multi-million pound investment into Northampton Saints., external<\/a><\/p>\n More outside investment is expected soon, with Gloucester<\/a> and Leicester<\/a> among those in conversations.<\/p>\n “Investor interest in the league has increased significantly in the last 12 months, certainly the last six,” says Massie-Taylor, who convened a summit for prospective buyers in London in June and is heading to the United States in October to press flesh and make the case.<\/p>\n His confidence is shared by more impartial experts.<\/p>\n Matthew Wheeler helped broker Red Bull’s takeover of Newcastle, but his specialist investment group A&W Capital has made deals across a variety of sports and media.<\/p>\n “I don’t think you’re drunk from the Kool-Aid to have belief in the Prem, there definitely is a momentum behind it,” he says.<\/p>\n Andrew Umbers is a co-founder of Oakwell Sports Advisory, which had a similar role in Exeter’s takeover.<\/p>\n “We put Exeter in front just over 110 sports investors and we had interest probably from around 30,” he says. “That interest came from North America, Asia and continental Europe.”<\/p>\n It is quite the difference from when Massie-Taylor would entertain enquiries from anyone with proof of identity, a clean chargesheet and a positive bank balance.<\/p>\n What is behind the turnaround?<\/p>\n There are a few factors that are happy coincidence, rather than canny design.<\/p>\n The value of sports teams generally has risen steeply. The sale of the LA Lakers for a record $12.5bn (\u00a39.3bn) this summer is the prime example.<\/p>\n Wheeler puts the spike down to the guaranteed eyeballs sport attracts in a fragmented media world, its relative resistance to disruption by artificial intelligence as a product and the prestige and scarcity value of owning a sports team.<\/p>\n Prem Rugby was also on an upward growth trajectory before the Covid pandemic hit. Even with the loss of three teams, a return to normality has allowed the league to rediscover that groove.<\/p>\n A brand of the heft of Red Bull getting involved in the league, undoubtedly sparked interest elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Massie-Taylor remembers how low the bar was to buy into the Prem in his first few, stressful years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-781164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}