Newcastle's owners reportedly rejected the chance to pay £700million for a 30 per cent stake in a Premier League football club - believed to be Manchester United.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) had been weighing up potential opportunities to get involved in English football for some time prior to their £305m takeover of Newcastle, which was initially agreed in April 2020 and eventually completed in October last year.
It took Premier League chiefs around 18 months to ratify the deal following a rigorous investigation into how PIF was funded due to links with Saudi's controversial Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. However, Newcastle's takeover may not have even happened had things turned out differently, as Salman is said to have been keen on investing in buying Man Utd.
According to The Athletic, Salman has dismissed the reports - while the Premier League stated after the takeover of Newcastle it is "comfortable and satisfied" the Saudi state will not interfere with PIF's dealings at St James' Park.
Yet Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is now the chairman of Newcastle and the governor of PIF, has revealed they could have invested in a different club, albeit for less than a majority stake. “When we looked at it, we looked at it form a financial perspective," Al-Rumayyan explained,
"By the way, it wasn’t the first offer we got regarding a football team. We looked in Italy, France and the UK as well. For example, in the UK there was a team that approached us on the basis that we take 30 per cent of the ownership, and we don’t interfere at all in terms of managing the club, for £700m.”
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While the offer of a 30 per cent stake was tempting, the opportunity to launch a complete takeover of Newcastle and acquire the club from Mike Ashley proved too much of an attraction to turn down. PIF took the controlling stake of 80% in the buyout, while their partners, the Reuben brothers’ RB Sports and Media, and Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners, each hold a 10 per cent stake.
Staveley, 49, was at the forefront of brokering the deal and Al-Rumayyan revealed it was only during negotiations that her and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, decided they wanted to get on board with the project, along with the Reuben brothers, who are represented on the board by Jamie Reuben. Since then Newcastle have replaced manager Steve Bruce with Eddie Howe, who kept the club in the Premier League, and spent more than £200m on transfers, including club record signing Alexander Isak in the summer.
Newcastle's owners have made no secret of their unabashed ambitions to win the Premier League and fire the club into the Champions League as soon as possible. Asked where he saw the team going from here, Al-Rumayyan highlighted Chelsea's record takeover in the summer as evidence of how their investment could pay huge returns in the years to come.
“We bought the whole team for £350m, instead of only having 30 per cent in another team for £700m," he added. “You can see Chelsea was sold for $3.5bn. So, my potential now is to go from £350m to at least $3.5bn.”
