Even though it’s banned, several investment funds, notably in Spain and Portugal, invest in players’ economic rights. This third-party ownership (TPO) came into the spotlight in 2016… with the Football Leaks tax scandal.

The basic idea is to find money outside the club to pay for a transfer, then split the profits. FIFA banned the practice in 2015.

The best known was called Doyen Sports. Tucked away in Malta (for the weather, no doubt), it co-invested in clubs and players, sourcing money that was often murky (the co-founder came out of the Kazakh-Turkish mafia), and paid part of it back to players in the British Virgin Islands.

Football Leaks revealed, among other things, that Cristiano Ronaldo had stashed away €150M using this method.

But there are other ways to invest in players:

• The bridge transfer: instead of Club A → Club B, the player goes Club A → Club B → Club C. That makes room for extra intermediary commissions or a detour through countries with friendlier tax rules. Two French clubs were sanctioned for it in 2021⁶.
• The bond route: the club borrows the money it needs from a fund. XXIII Capital has stepped in on several major transfers⁷, going as far as acting as a sort of clearing house between clubs.
• Ticketing: several clubs have backed securities with direct revenue, reproducing the effect of TPO but without the ownership guarantee.
• The floating charge: a kind of mortgage where the value of a player’s economic rights is pledged as collateral to secure a loan.

And no doubt a whole bunch of others we don’t know about yet. 😎