How Cardiff City and Swansea City owners made their millions | OneFootball

FLW looks at how Cardiff City and Swansea City's owners made their wealth

Naturally, Cardiff City and Swansea City supporters typically tend to have precious little in common - but one mutual school of thought is the discontentment towards their respective owners.

Cardiff owner Vincent Tan has long divided opinion in the Welsh capital. His decision to change the badge and, of course, the club's trademark home blue strip into a wretched red number - on account of the good luck that the colour red is believed to bring in Tan's native Malaysia - shortly into his reign gained widespread criticism and he's struggled to get many supporters back onside ever since.

More recently, his continual reluctance to appoint a director of football despite regularly undertaking a sizable turnover of the playing squad and a high managerial turnover is hardly helping his popularity either, although he has invested huge sums of his own wealth into keeping the Bluebirds afloat.

40 miles down the M4, Swansea's owners are hardly more popular with the Jack Army either. Most Swans supporters will tell you it's no coincidence that they were relegated from the Premier League just two years after being purchased by majority shareholders Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien in 2016, and they're yet to return to the top flight.

The duo have appointed nine permanent managers in less than a decade of ownership, showing the lack of strategy from the top down at the Swansea.com Stadium.

Similarly to Cardiff, Swansea simply don't look capable of competing for promotion anytime soon. That said, Swans have recently had the boost that many Bluebirds supporters may wish for themselves, with The Athletic reporting that Kaplan and Levien have agreed to sell their stake, subject to EFL approval.

With this in mind, it's timely to compare how Cardiff and Swansea's owners accumulated their respective wealth, and whose is greater...

How Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan made his wealth

The Malaysian has enjoyed an extremely successful career in business, which allowed him to take full control of Cardiff in 2010.

Tan's entrepreneurial career was launched at the age of 17 when he became a bank clerk in Malaysia, and following a spell operating as a life insurance agent, he purchased the Malaysia McDonald's franchise in 1980 before becoming its managing director two years later.

Shortly after, Tan turned to the Berjaya Corporation and gained full control of the company after injecting 51 percent of the shares he purchased in Sports Toto.

Tan retired as CEO in 2012, putting his full focus on Cardiff.

How Swansea City owners Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien made their wealth

In contrast to Tan, both Kaplan and Levien were involved in the sporting world before assuming full ownership.

Kaplan began his career as a lawyer and progressed up the ranks at an investment company before deciding to found his own group, where he bought and improved "underperforming" companies.

Kaplan and Levien met during the purchase of NBA franchise Memphis Grizzlies. Levien had more significant prior involvement in sport than Kaplan but he too initially worked as a lawyer before starting a firm, where he represented high-profile Stateside athletes.

After that, Levien was involved in the takeovers and purchases of a number of sports clubs and then became managing general partner of MLS side DC United prior to his takeover of Swansea.

The owners of both clubs have worked tirelessly to lodge glittering careers in the world of business.

However, Cardiff are currently claiming the bragging rights when it comes to having the richer owner. That's because Tan is believed to have an estimated net worth of £574 million, more than double that of Swansea's owners - combined.

According to reports, Kaplan and Levien have a collective estimated net worth in the region of £230 million. That would go some way to explaining the lack of investment in recent years, and the Jack Army will be hoping with all their might that the new owners - whoever they may be - are capable of providing the club with stronger financial backing.