How John Textor got rich as Sheffield Wednesday takeover talk picks up again | OneFootball

Talk has started again that John Textor could be about to launch a takeover bid for Sheffield Wednesday. This is how he acquired his fortune.

American businessman John Textor has set off a frenzy with reporting that he could be about to launch a bid for Sheffield Wednesday. Here, we take a look at how he made his fortune.

When a football club is in as dire a position as Sheffield Wednesday currently find themselves, any takeover talk will be the subject of frenzied speculation, and it hasn't taken much in the case of the American businessman John Textor. Following the club's account on Instagram was all it took for the conversation to start.

Wednesday have been up for sale for some considerable time, but Dejphon Chansiri rejected offers for the club from an American-based consortium earlier this year, and with time running out before the start of the 2025-26 season, there is increasing panic in the air that the club might not even find itself in a fit enough state to start the new season.

How John Textor made his fortune in the movie and streaming industries

John Textor describes himself as a "pioneer and developer of disruptive technologies, creative content, and digital distribution business models for media, entertainment and the internet", and as having "presided over great successes and great failures in the startup, turnaround, acquisition and growth of more than a dozen pure technology ventures, a number of which achieved global notoriety, unicorn valuations and successful exits".

What this means in practice is that he has, over the last three decades or so, had his fingers in many pies. He started out in extreme sports, buying into a snowboard manufacturer called Sims Snowboards and then a clothing company in the mid-1990s. His later investments came in the online realm, through a website developer called Jester Digital, online retailers Babyuniverse & eToys, and an online bank called Virtual Bank, which sprouted a Florida-based private wealth fund called Lydian Trust Company.

Textor's tens of millions became hundreds of millions through his involvement with Digital Domain, the visual effects studio behind movies such as Titanic, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Transformers, although this business later collapsed. He was also involved in the development and financing of Facebank Group, a company which made 3D virtual representations of celebrities which merged with the streaming platform fuboTV in 2020.

But the question of how much money Textor himself is actually worth has been open to speculation. As this report from Liverpool World in August 2024, published when he was interested in buying Everton, makes clear, there are many conflicting estimates of his actual wealth, and these can fluctuate wildly.

Textor has a mixed record from his involvement in football

John Textor is a keen proponent of the multi-club ownership model, but his own record within the game has been mixed. Crystal Palace won the FA Cup in May, but they were demoted from the Europa League to the Europa Conference League on account of Textor's stake in the French club Olympique Lyonnais. They have appealed the demotion to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Textor has been reported as being due to sell his stake in the club.

His involvement with the Brazilian club Botafogo has been a success. The club won their first Copa Libertadores at the end of 2024 and Textor's involvement has been described by the Financial Times as "a remarkable turnaround in the club’s fortunes [which] made it a model for investment in the country’s football industry".

But his involvement in European football has a patchier record. Lyon were demoted into Ligue 2 in France over the state of their finances, and although that demotion was successfully overturned on appeal, the seven-time French champions will start the new season under tight restrictions over their wage bill and transfer budget. And in Belgium, his decision to change the name of his club RWD Molenbeek to Daring Brussels brought fans out onto the streets in protest.

Textor considers himself to be a "disruptor", and speaking to BBC Radio Sheffield in June, football finance expert Kieran Maguire stated that him taking ownership of Sheffield Wednesday could, for Wednesday fans, be a case of 'frying pan into the fire'. Wednesday fans may consider that flames are already licking the soles of their feet.