John Textor exclusive interview: 'I want to be involved in an English club that wins championships' (2024)

John Textor is in a good place. Lyon have qualified for next season’s Europa League via a sixth-place finish in Ligue 1 and also reached the French Cup final, Botafogo are settled in their third straight season as part of Brazil’s top division and Crystal Palace have just recorded their joint-highest final Premier League placing of 10th.

Textor is the largest shareholder in Eagle Football, a major shareholder in all three clubs, as well as Belgian second-tier side RWD Molenbeek.

A digital-media entrepreneur from the U.S. state of Florida, Textor founded Facebank, a company which develops human-likeness technology, in 2013. He bought FuboTV, a streaming company, in 2020 before listing it on the New York Stock Exchange later that year with a value of $9billion (now £7.2bn) after merging the two companies.

In 2021, he bought a 40 per cent shareholding in Palace for £87.5million, and then increased it by five per cent last year.

But that is about to change.

Textor has engaged investment banking firm Raine Group to actively seek a buyer for Eagle Football’s 45 per cent stake in the south London club.

It begs an obvious question — why?

Textor, 58, sits in the lounge of his three-storey townhouse in the affluent Chelsea district of west London, and lists what seem like compelling reasons to buy his shares, adding, “It sounds like a guy who doesn’t want to sell, right?”

Then he says: “We’ve reached the point where we have a significant investment in a club we hold in the minority (in Palace). We’re having extreme success in Brazil and early on in France, (and) to not have that same level of integration with our partner in the UK… it just becomes more and more clear that that level of collaboration we want and need works.”

He says he would like to buy another Premier League club, with Everton being one he particularly admires, but has reached the conclusion that Eagle Football “is simply not a perfect fit for Crystal Palace”.

Textor is one of four general partners at Palace, alongside chairman Steve Parish and fellow U.S. businessmen Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who each have 25 per cent of the voting rights. But Parish is effectively the executive chairman who makes the decisions. So Textor’s company has 45 per cent of the club but only a 25 per cent say in what happens there.

He appears reluctant to sell his stake in a club of which he speaks incredibly fondly, remarking he dislikes sitting in the directors’ box because “people don’t clap hard or high-five hard enough” and that “they’re worried about what they look like on TV”. But he has already tried, unsuccessfully, to buy the extra five per cent needed to become the majority owner.

Textor’s stake has increased but there is, he believes, no pathway to having a majority — “Not in the timeframe that we’re working on”. An amicable divorce is therefore viewed as the only solution, with Textor praising Parish for achieving “a level of sustainability that is incredibly uncommon in today’s Premier League”.

“I want to be involved in an English club that wins championships; like, at the top of the league,” adds Textor. “And that requires taking risks that can also send you down the other way. I don’t know if that strategy is necessarily right for Palace. There are other people that are probably a little more patient than I am, and maybe impatience is not necessarily good for Palace.”

Textor opens the door to The Athletic with an Apple MacBook in his other hand, casually dressed in trousers, a hoodie and blue Adidas Samba trainers.

His introductory handshake is a soft one, he says, having recently undergone surgery for a broken elbow sustained skateboarding in Brazil after attending a national skateboarding competition. One of his trainers is a noticeably darker shade of blue than the other; a result, he suspects, of being sold an ex-display shoe alongside an unblemished one. Bemused, he explains that he likes the lighter blue but the darker shade is not to his taste.

“I don’t always have it all figured out,” he says. “But I wake up every day in a good mood. I don’t get stressed. I get angry, I get sad, I get happy.”

He tells a story about not being allowed into The Clifton Arms, the pub closest to Selhurst Park, when he tried to sneak a beer in close to kick-off of one match.

“It was packed, because I would show up late,” he says, laughing. “Somebody said to the bouncer, ‘Don’t you know who that guy is? He’s one of the owners of Crystal Palace’. The doorman said, ‘Yeah, and I’m Mickey Mouse’. They wouldn’t let me in.

“I still like being that guy who is not really noticed down there. But I’ll still be having beers in south London long after we’re not owners.”

Some at Palace would be pleased to see Textor go.

His multi-club project has run into opposition across its clubs, including at Palace, with critical banners held up by their ultras the Holmesdale Fanatics. But he would rather point to the interactions with fans than focus on what he says are groups which do not represent everyone’s views. Had he taken majority ownership of Palace three years ago, it would not even be a conversation.

“When I came in, I had no vision of the multi-club. Not even a thought,” Textor explains. “I started looking for other clubs when I started looking for personal fulfilment that I couldn’t find at Palace.

“When I realised I wasn’t going to be able to get anything other than boardroom fulfilment, I started looking for ways to quench my thirst for direct involvement on the grass — meaning players being a part of the the youth academy side of developing players and developing a professional team. My mistake, you know, early on (was) getting into a situation where the personal reasons I had to be there couldn’t be fulfilled.”

But while the process to find a buyer for his stake has begun, there is no guarantee anyone will meet Textor’s conditions, even if he says there has been a significant demonstration of interest.

“We have no obligation or need to sell (but) we would like a team in the UK’s first or second division that we can fill the gaps with (at the other clubs) without delay,” he says.

“The fact it (Palace) is responsibly managed makes it really attractive, because the fear factor that you’re just going to lose a ton of money is out of it. It has a stadium (redevelopment) approved and a new academy built. This club can go for four to six times (current) revenue.” The latest set of accounts, for the year to June 2023, show Palace’s turnover was £180million, meaning Textor believes the whole club could be sold for £720m to £1.08bn. “But nobody else believes that.”

“We’ll certainly get a willing buyer,” he adds. “Do we get a perfect match? I don’t know yet.”

There are, he says, three possible obstacles which could prevent a sale: the inability to find a suitable opportunity elsewhere, offers not meeting the valuation of £324million-£486m for his stake, and “the willing acceptance” of fellow general partners Parish, Harris and Blitzer. He insists he would not sell to “an absolute jerk”.

This seems a hefty price to potentially take a backseat in how the club are run, but Textor dismisses the question.

“Why would somebody show up and buy 45 per cent of a great London club, with an incredible academy, the best catchment area in England, and with a style of play that’s exciting and fun to watch and be a part of?” he says. “Ask the question that way and the question sounds kind of silly.”

Why, then, if he has so much passion for the club, does Textor not just wait for the opportunity that will eventually arise to buy a majority stake?

“It sucks to be selling now but I can’t buy more — I’ve tried,” he says. “The other guys love it too. The group of Harris, Blitzer and their friends (several shareholders within the Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment group with small stakes) that came in would like to own more. When you have 20 people or so in the club that all love the club, what do you do? A hostile takeover? You can’t really do it.

“There’s not a great fight going on for it. I sit down with them and they’re like, ‘Hey, we love the club too’. They never told me to f**k off, but it’s a smile and it’s that effect of, ‘I know you love the club, but we do too’. There’s not really the opportunity at this present time for that.”

There is another reason for the timing of this decision, after Textor made clear last year he would look to sell if he could not take control of the club. “It’s our intention to file to be a publicly listed company soon,” he says. “Publicly traded companies don’t get a lot of value out of minority interest, for economic reasons, and your shareholders like to know that your capital is deployed in situations that you can control.”

He is not finished with English football, however, and Everton are on his radar.

An agreement for the Merseysiders to become part of another multi-club ownership group, 777 Partners, will expire at the end of the month and Textor admits any deal is a “summer 2024 one”. But first he must sell his Palace stake. “These things tend to go pretty quickly if they happen at all,” he says.

“Yes (I’ve had conversations around buying Everton), with the existing constituents – different groups, different lenders, different equity holders. I’m watching it, but 777 still has a contract. There are people that are close to the club, who care a lot about it, who are also investing.

“Everton represents the best of English football: the struggles, the glory, the want. I love that it’s out of London. Everybody should want to buy Everton right now. That kind of club is what I’m referring to. How great would it be to take one of these great English clubs back to sort of glory?

“I suspect the problem with Everton is it won’t be available by the time we would be ready for it. We’re not going to rush the situation at Palace, no matter how good another opportunity looks.”

He says there would be “30 bidders” if he gambled on seeing if Everton enter administration and cites moral reasons for not wanting to do that. “I don’t want to be involved in a situation where they clean people out, I show up and get a great deal,” he says. “That’s for somebody else. That’s for the rotten souls of this world.”

In the meantime, he says he has had conversations with “a couple of Championship clubs”, while considering another Premier League side.

Does he have sufficient funds, though? This is a question often asked of Textor.

It is estimated, for example, it would cost around £750million ($955m) to buy Everton, reduce the debts, finish the new stadium under construction at Liverpool’s Bramley-Moore Dock and get a club who have flirted with relegation for three seasons in a row back on a competitive footing. He says he doesn’t need to explain himself to fans, and that the Premier League and the French banks which allowed him to buy Lyon all have robust measures in place to ensure proof of funding.

The money to buy Palace, Botafogo and Molenbeek “came entirely out of my checking account”, he adds, while Eagle Football has backers including private equity firm Ares and acquisition company Iconic Sports. Textor points to the listing of FuboTV to back up his argument: “When the time came to buy bigger, I brought in good partners. We raised more equity, and we raised debt primaries.”

So what next for Palace?

Textor is eager to stress that he remains committed to the club and hints at not completely giving up hope of a purchase if he is unable to sell up. “We’ll keep reminding people within Palace that anytime they want to sell us their shares, like, we’re there,” he says. “We’ll keep contributing capital to the Main Stand. We’ll keep contributing players. It’s not a horrible scenario. We’re just looking for a preferred scenario for us as a highly collaborative group of clubs.

“I really do know that the vast majority of Palace fans appreciate what we’ve done. I think that we will be remembered for a small but meaningful contribution during this brief period of time that may have helped the club come out of COVID… and achieve a level of ambition that we hadn’t seen in the club before. And I’m happy to be one of the four partners that contributed significantly to that. If my time at Palace is done, then it’s personally depressing. It always will be.

“(But) I know a year from now, two years from now, when Palace is in the top eight comfortably, I’m going to be happy.”

(Top photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images)