How exactly did Burnley FC's owner Alan Pace make his cash? | OneFootball

A look at how Alan Pace made his money to buy Burnley FC

With differing success since his takeover in 2020, Alan Pace's name splits opinion at Turf Moor, with his spell at the helm yet to deliver the success it promised in the early stages.

Around 18 months after the Pace-led ALK Capital took charge at Turf Moor, Burnley were relegated out of the Premier League, which left them on the back foot from the get-go as they were struggling to appease the fans.

With a section of Clarets fans skeptical of Pace from day one, he made the seemingly shrewd move to hand Sean Dyche a new long-term deal which certainly won some fans over, but his decision to sack Dyche a little over six months later proved perhaps he was a bit rash.

That decision angered yet more Burnley fans, and while a turbulent spell under Vincent Kompany certainly went some way to getting back on side given the brand of football on display, a raft of summer sales and very little money spent on incomings after relegation left Pace on the back foot again.

There's probably something similar to a 50/50 split concerning how the Burnley fans feel about him, and the outcome of their promotion quest this season could tip the balance one way or the other.

Here, we look at how Pace made his money to buy the club in the first place.

How did Alan Pace make his money pre-Burnley FC takeover and what is his net worth?

Pace is a self-professed "financial guru and sports technology innovator" and has a Wall Street background, which is primarily how he come to create his wealth, although that alone wasn't enough to buy the football club.

Pace has a reported net worth of £190 million, although taking over the club as part of the wider ALK Capital, it's a little unclear how much of that wealth is his personally, and now much belongs to the wider company.

The current Burnley chairman was appointed Managing Partner of ALK Capital in October 2019, and buying a football club was obviously something high on his agenda as he'd previously tried to take over Sheffield United.

The American has held several powerful roles within the financial industry, including head of sales and client solutions for the Prime Finance, Futures and Securities Services division at Citi, a New York-based investment bank, so it would be fair to say he knows his stuff where finances are concerned.

That perhaps explains why he took the approach he did to buy the club, although to this day, that remains perhaps the most controversial thing he's ever done at the helm.

Alan Pace's unique method to buy Burnley didn't help his cause

You'd be forgiven for expecting that for Pace to buy the club he'd have had to stump up his own money to get the deal done, but that's not actually the case.

A complicated buyout process called a leveraged buyout took place, which in effect meant that Pace used the club's cash resources to buy the club, which subsequently saddled the club with debt.

The club was debt free prior to the takeover, with years of on-field neglect from previous owner Mike Garlick boosting their financials, and Pace decided to use that cash to leverage the buyout of the club - a controversial approach to say the very least.

Talksport pundit Simon Jordan warned that his approach was risky, and relegation proved him right when most of the players were sold off, while the feat was repeated after relegation two years later too.