Who Owns Leeds United?
When Leeds United achieved their long-awaited promotion back to the Premier League in 2020 — after a club record 16 seasons out of the English top flight — fans were hoping it would be the dawn of a new era. But while Marcelo Bielsa's hard-running, tactically advanced side had an extremely impressive first season back in the EPL, they soon ran out of steam and have spent the last two campaigns back in the Championship. Given their status as one of English football's biggest, most historic clubs, they're always a welcome addition to the top tier, but these days competing at the highest level requires a huge amount of external investment that Leeds haven't always had.
In this article, we'll be exploring what level of investment the club is benefiting from in 2024/25, as we guide you through who owns Leeds United and how much money they've pumped into the club. We'll also explore what the Leeds fans think of their current owners. But first, we're going to guide you through a brief history of the club.
A Brief History Of Leeds United FC
Most English clubs with the suffix 'United' are the products of historic mergers between two or more clubs in a town or city. Leeds United's story, while similar, has slightly different origins. The club was formed in 1919 as a replacement for Leeds City, a team that was disbanded that same year due to illegal payments being made to players during the First World War. Leeds City were previously the biggest club in the Yorkshire city, and had been led effectively by legendary manager Herbert Chapman during the war, but they were outlawed from the English Football League and with the help of a loan from Huddersfield Town, the new club established themselves in the Second Division in their place during the early 1920s.
Leeds United won promotion to the top flight in 1923/24 but spent the next 30 years — a period punctuated by the huge disruption and trauma of the Second World War — yo-yo-ing between the top two divisions. In the 1950s, iconic Welsh forward John Charles helped the club build their reputation in the top flight, but things deteriorated again after his departure. The man who would truly establish Leeds as a giant of the English game was Don Revie, their manager from 1961 to 1974. Revie stabilised and promoted the Second Division club before turning them into title challengers in the late 1960s and eventually winning their first and second (and only, to date) top flight titles in 1968/69 and 1973/74. During this period, they also won the FA Cup and reached the European Cup final.
Revie's departure in 1974 led to more upheaval; now-legendary Derby and Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough struggled in his short stint as manager, and as the 1970s and 80s progressed Leeds' reputation crumbled, with the club ultimately spending most of the latter decade in the Second Division.
An uptick in form sparked by well-regarded manager Howard Wilkinson led to Leeds joining the inaugural Premier League season in 1992/93, and they were mainstays in the top flight until the early 2000s, even qualifying for the UEFA Cup in 1997/98. Ultimately, this success led Leeds to spend well beyond their means, and it came back to bite them. Former chairman Peter Risdale placed the club in serious financial trouble, causing a local consortium of insolvency experts to take over and sell off the club's key assets, accelerating their demise — they were relegated in 2004. Leeds then spent 16 years in the Championship and League One before they rose back up to the top flight, thanks in part to investment from their owners.
Who Owns Leeds United?
Leeds United's off-the-pitch troubles continued into the 2010s, with majority owner Massimo Cellino (an Italian businessman who invested in the club through his company Eleonora Sport Ltd) hiring and firing managers at will before being disqualified by the Football League for tax evasion. It became clear he'd have to sell up, and in May 2017 Andrea Radrizzani was announced as the man who had bought him out, completing a 100% buyout of the club and completing the purchase of Elland Road via his company Greenfield Investment Pte Ltd.
Radrizzani was the man who appointed super-popular head coach Marcelo Bielsa in the summer of 2018, and he still has credit in the bank with many Leeds fans as a result. However, that same year Radrizzani handed over part of his stake to 49ers Enterprises, the business arm of San Francisco 49ers, a prominent NFL side. At the start, the 49ers were minority investors, with an initial 15% stake in the club being shifted up to 44% in 2021.
In 2023, 49ers Enterprises completed a full takeover of the west Yorkshire worth an estimated £170 million. After the group bought out Radrizanni's remaining shares, newly-appointed club chairman Paraag Marathe insisted "this transition is a necessary reset to chart a new course for the club. This is an important moment for Leeds United." Club chief executive Angus Kinnear said "49ers Enterprises is bringing fresh leadership, management and a commitment to investment, which I'm confident will meet our ambition to compete for promotion and remain in the top flight as an established Premier League Club."
Who Runs The 49ers And How Much Are They Worth?
The key individuals behind the 49ers group are the York family, an uber-wealthy American family who have been involved in sports investment for decades. They're headed up by Marie Denise DeBartolo York, a billionaire businesswoman who inherited a real estate empire from her father and became co-chairman of the DeBartolo Corporation in 1994. The company already owned the NHL team Pittsburgh Penguins and the California-based NFL outfit the San Francisco 49ers, and York took over as operating head of the latter franchise in 1999.
In 2008, Denise DeBartolo York passed control of the team to her son Jed York; today, Jed is in control of the day-to-day operation of various parts of the 49ers Enterprise's business empire, including, since the 2023 takeover, Leeds United. According to Football League World, the US investors are worth an incredible $5.9 billion (£4.79hn), which made them the 11th-richest sports entity on the globe at the time of the buyout. Denise DeBartolo York, formerly the head of the operation, was worth an estimated $6.7 billion in 2023, according to Forbes.
For people with that level of wealth, a £170m investment in an English football club might feel like small change. But if the 49ers are able to take Leeds back to the top flight and establish them there, the value of the club will grow exponentially. Investors from the US have been getting heavily involved in English football in recent years after identifying commercial opportunities that were not being tapped into domestically; if Leeds' owners get the chance to sell the club on for a massive profit, they will most likely seize the opportunity.
What Impact Have The 49ers Made At Leeds United?
Many Leeds fans welcomed the full takeover of the 49ers, largely due to the souring of their relationship with former chairman and majority owner Andrea Radrizanni. His controversial sacking of Marcelo Bielsa angered many supporters, particularly given that the club ultimately still suffered relegation to the Championship the following season. And given the wealth of the York family and the success they've had investing in US sport, a lot of people thought that the new owners were well placed to take the club back to the promised land.
However, an extremely competitive promotion race in the 2024/25 EFL Championship meant that despite amassing a total of 90 points across the campaign (usually enough to guarantee automatic promotion) Leeds could only finish 3rd and ultimately missed out on promotion after losing the play-off final to Southampton. The subsequent exits of Premier League-level players Crysencio Summerville, Georginio Rutter and Archie Gray, and the lack of comparable replacements brought in, caused plenty of discontent in the Leeds fanbase over the summer of 2024.
After a shaky start to the season, proven Championship head coach Daniel Farke has restabilised the group and the club look set to compete for promotion again this campaign. This won't convince everyone that the 49ers are the right owners to take the club forward, with the club's recent transfer activity being branded as "incompetent" by some supporters, and former manager Sam Allardyce even suggesting that "Leeds fans will be wondering if the San Francisco 49ers are right for them if they're selling assets and not getting a team together that's good enough to get promoted."
It's make or break time; if the club don't get over the line and return to the promised land in 2025, patience with the 49ers will start to run very thin. However, If Leeds United do achieve promotion in 2024/25, they will be working with more financial backing than many other PL relegation candidates, with GiveMeSport estimating that five other current EPL sides have owners with a smaller net worth than the York family.
If you'd like to find out more about the fortunes of the various club owners operating in the Premier League, check out our in-depth guide to who owns every single Premier League club.
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