Takeovers spell end of Premiership Plc

By Simon Rabinovitch

LONDON (Reuters) - As English football clubs are being taken over by foreign billionaires, the era of stock market- listed clubs could soon be over with a new wave of owners opting to stay out of the financial spotlight.

But if fans, politicians and newspapers take moral umbrage at the foreign-led takeovers, few are mourning the end of the publicly listed club.

Going public became something of a craze for Premier League clubs in the mid-1990s. At its peak, fans and investors could buy shares in 10 of the 20 current Premier League clubs.

Only a trio of Premier League clubs still have publicly tradable shares following the latest buyouts -- which have seen Manchester City purchased by ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and Newcastle bought by reclusive British retail tycoon Mike Ashley.

Only Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Birmingham City remain, although takeover rumours surround all three following big changes in their major shareholders in the last few months.

Heralded in the 90s as a more democratic ownership structure and a way to pump cash into clubs, stock listings have come to be seen as a mistake by many -- unprofitable for investors, unrewarding for teams and costly for fans.

"What investors didn't appreciate is one of the peculiarities of football," said Christine Oughton, director of the Football Governance Research Centre at Birkbeck, University of London.

Making a profit is the overriding goal for most companies, she said: but football clubs have the even higher priority of winning games. They also have to pay out around 60 percent of their revenues to players.  Continued...