Stefan Borson: This is the significance of Aston Villa deal after official documents filed
Aston Villa have been making moves to improve their profit and sustainability (PSR) position over the past couple of years.
Villa have faced PSR issues after spending close to the allowable losses limit, with Premier League clubs only permitted to lose £105million over a rolling three-year period.
Villa completed the last-ditch sale of their women’s team to V Sports – the club’s holding company – helping them raise funds before their accounting deadline on 30 June.
In a new development, Aston Villa Women’s Football Club Limited issued 111 shares for £5.5m on 22 October.
The West Midlands giants then confirmed in an official statement Marc Zaher, who is co-president of investment firm Blue Owl Capital Inc., has made a minority investment into the club’s women’s team.
Aston Villa could get Uefa boost after confirmed news
Former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson exclusively told Football Insider the transaction has no significance to the men’s team after the women’s team were sold to V Sports.
However, it will still be included in their Uefa calculations after Villa were fined £9.5m in July for breaching the governing body’s financial rules.
Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson said: “For Aston Villa men’s, there’s no significance at all. They’ve sold it.
“The women’s team is now from a financial perspective independent of the men’s, save that it will be included within the Uefa calculations I understand because it’s still part of the reporting perimeter. But from a PSR perspective, it’s separate.
“The key fact being that when they moved it to V Sports, which is the parent company above Aston Villa Limited, that effectively crystallised a gain in Aston Villa as it came out of Aston Villa, so they would effectively have got a profit.
“But it would only be a paper profit and that would have helped them with PSR, so we know they did that just before the end of June of this year.”
Unai Emery’s side posted a club-record revenue in their latest published accounts for 2023-24 after their turnover increased from £217.7m in 2022-23 to £275.7m, while their losses fell from £119.6m to £85.4m.
Aston Villa match Chelsea after deal agreed
Elsewhere, Chelsea also sold their women’s team to owners BlueCo last summer for around £200m, helping them turn their previous £90m loss for 2022-23 into a £128m profit for 2023-24.
In a similar move to Villa’s latest deal, Chelsea’s owners then sold a minority stake in their women’s team for £20m to Alexis Ohanian, the husband of tennis star Serena Williams.
“When you bring in a minority investor, there are real implications,” said Borson.
“One is it validates the value that they will have transferred it out for in June, so that’s good. It means that the approval process from the Premier League will be very straightforward.
“Aston Villa will be able to point to the price paid by an independent third-party minority investor, presumably a credible one.
“So, they’ll be able to say ‘Well, you don’t need to do a particularly extensive valuation of Aston Villa Women because a third-party independent purchaser has done that for you and paid X million pounds for a minority stake’. So, that’s positive and makes life a lot easier.”
Villa are continuing to toe the PSR line following their historic spending at Villa Park.
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