Football General Manager
- More famous faces in the Championship
- Taking aim at top-flight football
- Benefits to be found on & off the pitch
The Championship will be loaded with famous investors in 2025-26, with Reynolds and McElhenney having guided Wrexham into the second tier of English football on the back of three successive promotions.
Birmingham continue to spend big in the transfer market, after shattering League One records last year, and NFL legend Tom Brady forms part of the board at St Andrew’s. Rap star Snoop Dogg has now joined the party at Swansea.
He has acquired a minority stake in the Welsh club, having formed part of their 2025-26 kit release, and joins Ballon d’Or-winning Real Madrid legend Luka Modric as part of the Swans’ ownership group.
Snoop will help Swansea to build their brand off the pitch, but football finance expert Rob Wilson has told OLBG of benefits that can also be found on the field: “I think what we’re seeing generally in the Championship with some of these celebrity buyers is that their cultural capital outweighs their capital investment.
“It’s about the brand of the artist and the additional benefit that that brings to really kind of promote and extend the Swansea City brand, particularly in the North American market which he is obviously very, very well recognised.
“The North American market is mature from a commercialisation perspective but immature in terms of the followership of British clubs. So outside of Manchester United, Liverpool and to a lesser extent Chelsea, nobody’s really capturing that market from a UK perspective, which is why Wrexham would be in the top 10.
“So this is an opportunity for Swansea to increase that kind of global footprint, the marketing, the sponsorship, the advertising, to increase the longer term exposure and therefore increase the kind of the ongoing revenue generation for the football club, which then might have a medium term impact on squad size and transfer fees and then ultimately potentially getting to the Premier League as well.”
Swansea ended the 2024-25 campaign in 11th spot, seven points adrift of the play-off places, and will be eager to finish above Wrexham next season – allowing them to remain the No.1 team in Wales – while also pushing towards the Premier League.
