Half of the Premier League is now in some form of multi-club ownership (MCO). But those clubs are at the top of the food chain and would not have experience of being the poorer relative.
The City Football Group has Manchester City as its core club, and full control of teams in Italy, France, Brazil, Australia, Uruguay and Belgium. It also owns 47% of Girona in Spain.
Red Bull is a majority owner of teams in Germany, Austria, the United States and Brazil, with minority stakes in other clubs, including Leeds United.
These are major football operations, MCO behemoths. Players and managers will move between entities. It is like an employee getting promoted through a multi-national company.
Head coach Jesse Marsch, for instance, went from New York Red Bulls to Salzburg to Leipzig. But never in the middle of a season.
Other MCOs are set up share ideas and enjoy relative growth, such as Tony Bloom’s interest in Brighton, Union Saint-Gilloise, Hearts and Melbourne Victory.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos owns 100% of Nice and Swiss club FC Lausanne-Sport, but only 28.94% of Manchester United. But his decisive influence in football operations at Old Trafford is enough to trigger one of Uefa’s indicators of an MCO.
Chelsea and Strasbourg’s two-club MCO is “unique”, football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport.
While most MCOs tend to be football focused, he added BlueCo is more of a hedge-fund strategy. That means bringing in assets that are low value and selling them on high returns.
“Strasbourg are perhaps slightly adrift in the sense they are seen as a holding area of talent that perhaps Chelsea want to bring to the club at a later point,” said Maguire.
“You could argue that’s the case with Rosenior, to get experience at another part of the Chelsea empire.
“BlueCo target younger players, they put them on long-term contracts. The players deliver and the value of the player is locked in.”
Strasbourg have the youngest squad in Europe’s top five leagues, with Chelsea fourth-youngest.
