A spokesman for American tycoon Shahid Khan says the Jacksonville Jaguars owner has bought Premier League club Fulham.
Jim Woodcock told The Associated Press that the deal to buy the London’s oldest professional football club from Mohamed Al-Fayed had been completed. The sale comes with Khan’s Jaguars preparing to play NFL regular season games in London.
The Jaguars have a deal to play one home game in London for four consecutive seasons starting in October at Wembley Stadium against the San Francisco 49ers. Khan, a Pakistani-American billionaire on the bank of his car parts business, is now the sixth American owner of a Premier League team.
The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday Al Fayed was on the verge of selling the Barclays Premier League club after investing £200m in the sixteen years since he bought the club from the Muddyman family in 1997. Khan is rumoured to have paid more than £150m to the 84 year-old Al-Fayed, who is known to be discreetly selling off his business assets.
Khan knows London well and is keen to break into the British sports market, having signed a deal for Wembley Stadium to host one of the Jaguars’ home NFL matches as part of an ‘international series’ for each of the next four years. The 62 year-old considers the English capital as ‘the missing piece’ in the growth of the Jaguars and buying one of the country’s most historic football clubs offers a chance for synergy between his two sports sides.
Al Fayed held secret negotiations in his Park Lane office, with Fulham’s club executive Alistair Mackintosh apparently unaware of an imminent change of ownership – with the Mail’s disclosure of Khan’s interest being dismissed as newspaper speculation. Khan and his representatives have been engaged in parallel discussions with Al Fayed’s advisors and the Premier League to expedite the deal.
Khan was listed among the world’s richest 500 people last year by Forbes with an estimated wealth of £1.7bn, putting him somewhere between Newcastle’s Mike Ashley and Arsenal’s Stan Kroenke in Premier League terms, could transform Fulham’s spending power from the self-sufficient mantra that governed the club’s decision making over the past three seasons.
Manager Martin Jol has existed on a meagre budget of late – with little spending on his first-team squad. Khan, who has spent £45m in the last two months to improve the EverBank Field stadium in Jacksonville by building the world’s largest video screens, is willing to spend money to strengthen Fulham’s first team squad, according to sources with an understanding of the deal.
