If Dragan Solak sold Southampton FC today, how much would the club be worth? AI decides | OneFootball

The Saints owner has been in charge since 2022.

Southampton have had a bumpy ride since Serbian businessman Dragan Solak first acquired an 80% stake in the Saints in January 2022.

Having took charge when they were a relatively comfortable Premier League outfit under Ralph Hasenhuttl, their proud 12-year spell in the top division was to come to an end only a season later, when both Nathan Jones and Ruben Selles came in but were unable to keep the South Coast club up.

The appointment of Russell Martin perhaps raised a few eyebrows ahead of their return to the Championship in 2023, but it proved to be an inspired one as he won them promotion via the play-offs at the first time of asking.

However, they suffered one of the worst top-flight seasons in recent history throughout the 2024/25 campaign, with Ivan Juric another failed managerial appointment after Martin's sacking earlier on in the season, as they went down with only 12 points.

Here, FLW asked AI what it thinks the Saints will be worth now, should Solak's Sport Republic consortium decide to sell up now.

Dragan Solak's initial takeover price was relatively cheap

Despite being a relatively stable top-flight club upon their purchase, Sport Republic were able to acquire their 80% share from former Chinese owner Gao Jisheng for an initial £100m fee in January 2022.

Despite that, Football Finance expert Kieran Maguire estimated that the true implied equity value was closer to £130-140m and, when factoring in the £80m worth of debt that Sport Republic took on, the total enterprise value was seen at around £220m.

Obviously, that price may well now have fluctuated due to the current plight of the football club, with parachute payments currently being administered for the second time in three years.

They would end up selling for roughly how much they brought

Despite Solak seemingly getting the club on the cheap initially, it would be unlikely that the club would be sold for certainly anywhere near south of £100m.

This conversation was brought up in May, when ex-Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan said on air that he'd heard a rumour about Sport Republic looking to sell. Despite this, that talk was quickly squashed by the Daily Echo, who assured that the club was not for sale.

Furthermore, local journalist Alfie House was quizzed on the matter on a podcast in May and somewhat shut down the issue: "Clearly, that situation is alive in the sense that there are people out there with money who want to buy a football club, so anything's possible. I think, based on what I've been told, it sounds like Solak is still sort of quite closely attuned to long-term planning, and I've also got it on pretty good authority that he wouldn't sell the club for £125m. So that number, which was part of the rumour that went around, that was wrong, at least. So does that sort of detract from the entire rumour? I don't know. So there's positive signs there. But I think, as Steve has said, everything is for sale."

Despite this, there has been no further movement on that front - and ChatGPT suggests that Solak's Sport Republic would roughly sell between £220-250m, assuming a sale includes existing debt - which would end up with Sport Republic essentially returning what they initially invested in the club.