12 richest EFL Championship owners in 2023 (Ranked) | OneFootball

Highlights

The Championship may be the second tier of English football, but it still requires big bucks to operate at this level.

Money in football is incredibly inflated nowadays, and that is reflected in the bank accounts of the 12 richest owners of clubs in the Championship.

Some of the names and teams on this list are obvious, whilst some others seem well out of place.

Here we rank the 12 richest EFL Championship owners in 2023, according to various reports online.

12 Vincent Tan, Cardiff City - £623.49m

As you will see from the rest of this list, this is a fairly measly amount in the Championship nowadays, which is an incredible thing to say about an owner of a second division side whose worth almost two-thirds of a billion pounds.

Tan hasn't done his best to make himself popular at Cardiff, from sacking good managers to changing the colours worn by the bluebirds to red. He won't be well-spoken about in the Welsh capital.

11 The Hemmings Family, Preston North End - £1.16b

You didn't read that wrong. 11 of the 24 Championship sides are owned by billionaires.

Trevor Hemmings bought 51% of the club, back in 2010 after Preston were served with a winding up petition by HM Revenue and Customs.

He was a director at the club in the 1970s, and he oversaw the club's return to the Championship, with the highest finishing position of ownership being seventh.

Unfortunately, he passed away in October 2021, at the age of 86. His son Craig is the current chairman of the club, and the family still own that controlling stake in the club. But reports suggest that they are open to selling if the right price is offered.

10 The Venkys, Blackburn Rovers - £1.56b

Rovers have been known for elaborate spending in the past, and The Venkys were no different. They promised to bring Ronaldinho and Diego Maradona to Ewood Park when they took over in 2010, but that's not the half of it.

According to the Daily Mail, the club were playing a game in Pune as part of a promotional tour when a member of the team's ground staff noticed that the grass on the pitch wasn't cut short enough. He requested that it be shortened, expecting the normal method of a lawnmower to be used. The Rovers employee returned later to see a large group of women, on their hands and knees, using scissors and a ruler to get the grass to the appropriate length.

The outlet described their move to buy the club as "the most tumultuous takeover in the history of English football" but there is a lot more stability at the club than there was when they first arrived.

After a decade of initial madness and two relegations, things are a lot more normal in that part of Lancashire.

9 Dragan Solak, Southampton - £1.67b

Solak is the lead investor in Sport Republic, the company that recently acquired Gao Jisheng’s 80 per cent stake in Southampton in 2022, according to The Athletic.

He's a golf enthusiast who made his money through companies based in TV and telecommunications. The former Premier League club is also co-owned by Rasmus Ankersen and Henrik Kraft.

8 Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Sunderland - £2b

This lad, and it is appropriate to use that phrase because of his age, is just 26-years-old. He is only eight years removed from being able to buy a pint of beer in this country, and he is worth that ungodly amount of money. Unbelievable.

He is a member of the Louis-Dreyfus family. The family of his father, Robert, founded the Louis-Dreyfus group in 1851. His mother, Magarita, has a current net worth of £2.8 billion, according to Forbes.

Kyril's family used to own French football club Marseille, before they sold it in 2016.

His takeover of the club, in 2020, made him the youngest chairman in English football.

7 Stephen Lansdown, Bristol City - £1.85b

Lansdown founded a financial service firm in 1981 called Hargreaves Lansdown. The company's revenue last year was £583 million, according to the Financial Times.

He owns Bristol Sport, which manages the commercial operations of not only Bristol City F.C, but also Bristol Rugby Club, Bristol City W.F.C., Bristol Flyers and DZ Racing.

6 Guochuan Lai, West Bromwich Albion - £2.2b

In 2016, the Chinese entrepreneur took over previous owner Jeremy Peace's 88 per cent stake in the Baggies. He paid around £175 million for that stake in the club, Birmingham Mail reported.

He claimed that he'd been a fan of football, and the club, since the last 1970s when Albion did a tour of the Far East.

He made his money through a Chinese landscape design and construction company. That company, which is named Palm Eco Town Development Company was the principal sponsor of the club when they were in the Premier League, during the 2017/18 season.

5 Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, Leicester City - £3b

He is the second of the newly relegated owners on this list; don't worry, the third one makes the list too.

The Thai businessman's wealth was reported to have doubled earlier in the summer. Forbes reported that Srivaddhanaprabha's, or Kun Top as he's known, net worth had increased by a staggering 59%. This jump has been but down to a boost in tourism in Top's native land.

Top took over the position that his father held at the club after Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died in a tragic helicopter crash in 2018. The crash happened not long after they took off from the King Power stadium, as they were heading to Luton Airport.

4 49ers Enterprises, Leeds United - £4.8b

The group are the newest owners on this list. They already owned a 44% stake in the club, prior to their takeover earlier in the summer. Former chairman Andrea Radrizzani sold his controlling stake for around £170 million.

49ers Enterprises owns, and is the strategic arm of, the San Francisco 49ers - an American football team. They've held minority stakes in Leeds since 2019.

They made up of some star-studded athletes, most notably Olympic legend Michael Phelps, golfer Jordan Speith, and basketball player Russell Westbrook are all a part of the now majority stake-holding group. Westbrook was in attendance at Elland Road for the club's first game of the season against Cardiff City.

The Sun.

3 The Coates Family, Stoke City - £7.98b

Peter Coates initially became chairman, and majority shareholder in the club in 1986. He took over from Sandy Clubb in September of that year. That tenure lasted until 1998 when he resigned as chairman due to pressure from fans after poor results.

Coates, who co-founded bet365, re-purchased the club, alongside his family, through a subsidiary of the betting firm. During his second run with the club, he has overseen promotion to the Premier League, a long spell in England's top division, and relegation back to the Championship in 2018.

Denise and John Coates are the current co-CEOs of the company. Their combined net worth puts them just short of the £8 billion mark.

2 Gamechanger 20 Ltd., Ipswich Town - £10.8b

It's an absolutely staggering number for a club that was in the third division of English football last season. The American business trio of Brett Johnson, Berke Bakay and Mark Detmer took over the club towards the back end of the 2020/21 season.

They had a good amount of knowledge on the sport before the takeover, having already successfully Phoenix Rising FC over in the States, under the ownership of Gamechanger 20.

The limited company is actually 90%, themselves, by the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, according to the East Anglian Daily Times.

1 Tony Fernandes, Gnanalingam family, and Mittal family, QPR - £14.5b

Despite the fact that QPR's owners have crater-sized financial pockets, in recent years they've been massively restricted by Financial Fair Play. It just goes to show that it's not what you spend, it's how you spend it.

The club's ownership has been on a turbulent process. The majority shareholder is Tony Fernandes, whilst the Gnanalingam and Mittal families both own minority stakes in the club.

The private limited companies listed officers are Rafaell Leffa, Thomas Quintella Brandao Vilela Torres, who are both directors of the company, and a British organisation called Pennsec limited which is listed as the club's secretary.