49ers Enterprises agrees Leeds takeover deal

Leeds United has announced that an agreement has been reached for 49ers Enterprises, a division of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, to buy the club from Aser Ventures in a deal that will include Elland Road.

The deal will see Leeds chairman Andrea Radrizzani sell his majority stake in the club, which was recently relegated from the English Premier League.

In a statement, Leeds said that both parties will continue to work through the details, with further updates to be provided soon.

49ers Enterprises already holds a 44% stake in the club and its full takeover has been mooted for some time. According to reports, the deal will be worth £170m (€198m/$214m) – compared to around £400m if the club was still in the Premier League.

49ers Enterprises has been involved with Leeds since May 2018, when it acquired a stake worth a reported 10%. In November 2021, this increased to 44% and its full takeover of the club will require approval from the English Football League (EFL).

The development comes with Radrizzani poised to take over Italian club Sampdoria, which itself was recently relegated from the top-tier Serie A to Serie B.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Radrizzani proposed to use Elland Road as security for a bank loan as part of his takeover bid for Sampdoria.

The Athletic reported that under a heads of terms agreement co-signed by Radrizzani, Elland Road would have acted as a collateral as part of a deal by Aser Ventures and bidding partner Gestio Capital to borrow €30m from Italian financial services group Banca Sistema, helping to fund the takeover of Sampdoria.

Radrizzani completed a full takeover of Leeds in May 2017, adding ownership of Elland Road, the club’s home since 1919, shortly after. The stadium’s current ownership body, Elland Road Limited, was formed on December 9 2020, fully controlled by Greenfield Investments, the investment vehicle used by Radrizzani.