For the last 10 years, the UK stock market has not been the investment destination of choice.
Whether due to economic sluggishness, the chaotic politics, or simply the types of company available (“NOT TECH”), since 2016 money has been flowing the wrong way.*
But! One very visible part of Britain seems to have gone from strength to strength in that time.
Football.
The numbers speak for themselves. 2 billion people follow the Premier League each season, and it contributes nearly £10 billion to the UK economy (along with more than 100,000 jobs). When Hollywood stars are getting involved in 3pm lower-league kick-offs, something must be going right.
In fact, over half of the clubs in the Premier League have changed ownership in the past decade.
And although owning a football club isn’t JUST about the investment return, we thought it might be interesting to compare the “returns” of big football teams to the “returns” of the big stocks over the past ten years …
We looked at the top six companies in the FTSE 100.
And we used the “big six” football clubs. We worked pretty hard on the colour formatting in the chart.**.
A bit of a mixed bag of results. Some companies did ok, but in general you’d say it’s been better to be in British football than to be in British business …
Of course what’s quite funny is that, in investment terms, football teams are tiny.
Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea wouldn’t even make it into the FTSE 100, and although the Manchesters and Liverpool would, they’d be hanging around in the relegation zone, alongside the likes of Howden Joinery, Autotrader and JD Sports!
See you next week!
*Although 2025 looks like being a positive year!
** You can’t actually invest in football clubs (with the exception of Manchester United, who have some shares listed, weirdly, in New York) so we’ve just looked at the total size of the club in 2015 compared to now, as estimated by Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinteitelbaum/2025/05/30/the-worlds-most-valuable-soccer-teams-2025/). We did the same for the big companies, looking at size rather than share price returns (but they end up pretty similar).
By Ben Kumar, head of equity strategy at 7IM
