Welcome to issue #039 of Contemporary Football, your inside look at how the game really works behind the scenes.
Monday to Friday, you’ll uncover a new perspective on football business, and sometimes a deeper story that sharpens your thinking and gives you an edge in the beautiful game.
If you need support on your football journey, just write me.
Hey everyone,
A few weeks ago, John Elkann, owner of Juventus, released a short video.
Nothing elaborate.
Simple setting.
Juventus hoodie.
A calm, controlled tone.
And one clear sentence:
“Juventus, our history, our values, are not for sale.”
With that line, Elkann effectively closed the door on the offer that had been circulating around the club.
An offer linked to Tether, the famous stablecoin, which already owns 11.5% of Juventus and could, in theory, push toward 30%.
In football, words like these are never neutral.
Clubs are not just assets
Football clubs are not newspapers.
They are not abstract financial vehicles.
They lose money. Often a lot of it.
But they also carry something heavier: emotional capital.
Millions of fans do not experience ownership as a spreadsheet.
They experience it as identity, memory, and belonging.
For now, control stays with Exor (Elkann Group), which owns 65.4% of Juventus and has injected hundreds of millions over the last decade to keep the club standing.
Some fans will feel relieved.
Others disappointed.
A promised billion in fresh capital is tempting when results are fragile, and patience is thin.
But stopping the discussion at Juventus misses the real point.
The uncomfortable reality of European football
European football is still structurally unprofitable.
UEFA’s own data confirms it:
despite small improvements, clubs collectively lose billions.
The Premier League alone accounts for close to one billion in annual losses.
Juventus itself has required roughly €676m in capital injections over the last ten years.
We like to say “clubs should be run like companies.”
We celebrate stadium ownership and governance reforms.
But the truth is simpler and harsher.
Football survives because someone keeps paying.
Who is making money around football
There is one segment of the football ecosystem that consistently makes money.
Betting.
Global betting volumes exceed USD 100bn.
Serie A alone is estimated at around USD 16bn.
Betting groups are profitable.
Clubs are not.
You see this everywhere:
– shirt sponsors
– pitch-side advertising
– odds embedded into match coverage itself
Football has already accepted speculation as part of its economic backbone.
Why Tether is not an anomaly
This is where the Tether discussion becomes interesting, beyond the headlines.
Stablecoins are the chips of the crypto casino.
High velocity and speculative behaviour.
Regulators and academics have been clear about how close this world sits to gambling dynamics in the minds of investors.
But we are not here to define or judge crypto.
Many people start feeling nervous about the “invasion” of crypto into football.
If football lives off speculation, it should not surprise anyone when capital from that world tries to move upstream.
This is just a structural observation.
The real question
Should Tether own Juventus?
That’s not a question we can answer.
The more interesting question is what this issue tells us about where football is going.
Modern football still needs external capital to grow, innovate, and compete globally.
That capital can come from many places: families, funds, corporations, or new financial actors.
Each brings opportunities and trade-offs.
What matters is not the label on the money, but the framework around it:
Governance, transparency, long-term intent, and alignment with the club’s identity.
Football doesn’t need to reject capital.
It needs to understand it better.
And it needs to be honest about the structures that sustain the game.
That, to me, is the conversation worth having.
See you tomorrow,
Federico