Premier League Owners: Three Clubs Left in British Hands

Eleven of the twenty Premier League clubs are majority-owned by Americans. Only three — Brentford, Brighton and Tottenham — remain fully British-owned.

That is the single most useful fact about the modern Premier League, and it includes four of the traditional big six.

The American-owned clubs

Club	Owner
Liverpool	Fenway Sports Group
Manchester United	Glazer family ~69% (INEOS 28.94% minority)
Arsenal	Kroenke Sports & Entertainment
Chelsea	Clearlake Capital / Todd Boehly consortium
Aston Villa	V Sports (Wes Edens)
Bournemouth	Black Knight Football Club (Bill Foley)
Burnley	Velocity Sports (Alan Pace)
Crystal Palace	Woody Johnson
Everton	The Friedkin Group
Fulham	Shahid Khan
Leeds United	49ers Enterprises

Manchester City is not on that list — it is Abu Dhabi-controlled through City Football Group — but it does carry a significant US minority shareholding. Counting it would make the American presence broader still.

City Football Group is itself the largest multi-club structure in football, holding 13 clubs worldwide — part of a pattern covering nearly 42% of Big Five league clubs, set out in our guide to multi-club ownership.

Four of the big six

Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are all US-majority-owned. Manchester City has the US minority stake. Only Tottenham, of the traditional big six, remains British-controlled.

Two things follow from that concentration. The clubs generating most of the league’s global revenue answer to owners outside the country, and several of those owners already run American franchises — Fenway Sports Group holds the Boston Red Sox, Kroenke the Los Angeles Rams and Denver Nuggets, the 49ers Enterprises arm belongs to an NFL team.

That cross-ownership is why the debates that arrive in English football — closed competitions, franchise relocation, capped costs — tend to arrive with an American accent. Our profiles of who owns the Dallas Cowboys and the richest NFL owners cover the same investor class on home ground.

Why the Premier League specifically

By the standards of American franchise values, English football is inexpensive — Real Madrid, the most valuable club in world football, is worth less than five US franchises, as our ranking of the most valuable sports teams shows.

The attraction is structural, not sentimental. The Premier League sells the most valuable broadcast rights in club football and sells them globally, which makes its clubs media assets with international reach rather than local sports teams.

There is also an asymmetry worth naming. American leagues are closed — a franchise cannot be relegated, so its revenue floor is guaranteed. Premier League clubs can be relegated, and the financial fall is severe. Buyers are therefore acquiring a more valuable asset than a comparable US franchise in reach, but a riskier one in structure. Burnley and Leeds have both experienced that in recent years, which has not deterred their American owners.

Any purchase must clear the Premier League’s Owners’ and Directors’ Test, a suitability screening covering criminal convictions, insolvency history and other disqualifying conditions. It is the reason agreed sales sometimes collapse before completing.

Those owners fund the officials as well as the players: our guide to the Premier League referee salary covers what the match officials are paid.

Those owners also authorise the game’s largest salaries — see our guide to the highest paid football managers.

The most contested case is Manchester United, where the Glazers hold about 69% and the votes while INEOS holds 28.94% and runs football — set out in our guide to who owns Manchester United.

What the Premier League has no version of

Set the eleven against how the biggest clubs elsewhere are held, and the Premier League looks unusual rather than normal.

Model	Example
Private / investment ownership	17 of 20 Premier League clubs
Member-owned	FC Barcelona — 141,000 socios vote on major finance
Members hold control by rule	Bundesliga 50+1 — investors capped at 49%
Amateur association	The GAA, owner of Ireland’s biggest grounds

Barcelona’s members were asked to approve additional financing when the Camp Nou rebuild overran — an accountability step that has no Premier League equivalent. And the largest stadiums in Ireland belong to an unpaid amateur body, as our guide to Croke Park capacity sets out.

There is no fan-controlled Premier League club. Whatever one thinks of that, it is a choice English football has made and most of its neighbours have not.

How quickly this changes

Two forces move these numbers every year: takeovers, and promotion and relegation.

A single sale can shift the American count by one. So can a promoted club arriving with an overseas owner or a relegated one departing. The count of eleven is accurate for 2026 and should be re-checked each season rather than assumed — which is why this page carries a review trigger rather than a fixed claim.

How we checked these numbers

The count of eleven American-owned clubs, the named owners and the identification of Brentford, Brighton and Tottenham as the only fully British-owned clubs are from Sports Illustrated’s ownership breakdown and ESPN’s coverage of US investment in English football, with context from The Conversation and The Swiss Ramble’s financial analysis.

Ownership structures are more complex than a single name. Several clubs have layered holding companies, minority investors and separate stadium ownership, and the Manchester United and Manchester City entries are the clearest examples of why a one-line answer understates the position. Where a minority stake is material we have named it.

Review class: seasonal, plus event-driven. Recheck at the start of each season for promotion and relegation, and on any completed takeover. Ownership structures across other sports are collected in our ownership hub.