Private equity has steadily increased its exposure to sports over the last few years, with European football emerging as an increasingly attractive investment. Firms such as CVC Capital Partners with LaLiga, RedBird Capital Partners with AC Milan, Sixth Street with Real Madrid, and Silver Lake with City Football Group have allocated significant capital across the sport, raising an important question about what investors see in European football that has yet to be fully unlocked.

The answer is not that football needs more fans, because the audience, loyalty, and global demand are already there. Some of the biggest clubs in the world have hundreds of millions of supporters and fan relationships that can last for generations, yet the commercial value generated around those audiences does not always match their enormous global reach. European football may never monetize its audience at the same level as the NFL because the markets, consumer behavior, and structure of the sport are very different, but investors do not need to close the entire gap for meaningful value to be created.

That is what makes the opportunity interesting. Investors are starting with global brands and fan bases that would be almost impossible to build from scratch, then looking for ways to create more value from what is already there. Better direct relationships with fans, stronger digital and commercial offerings, and more productive stadium and real estate assets can all create new opportunities for growth.

European football already has one of the largest audiences in sports. The Premier League alone is distributed across 189 countries and reaches nearly 900 million homes worldwide. The biggest European clubs have grown far beyond their local markets and become global brands followed by millions of people across different cultures, and generations.

What makes that audience even more valuable is how sticky it is. Football fans do not behave like normal customers. Someone might switch banks, clothing brands, or streaming services, but switching football clubs is almost unheard of. That loyalty can last an entire lifetime and, more importantly, across generations. Parents pass their clubs down to their children, who can eventually do the same with theirs. Very few brands can build a customer relationship that has the potential to last for decades and continue into the next generation.

For investors, the opportunity is not necessarily finding more fans, but finding better ways to monetize the ones already there. European football has mastered global fan acquisition, but it has not mastered global fan monetization.

European football is home to some of the largest sports brands in the world, but measuring the true size of those fan bases is difficult. Instead of relying on estimates of how many people consider themselves fans, we can simplify the comparison by looking at one platform that both sides use: Instagram. Instagram does not capture the entire audience, and followers are not the same as paying customers, but using the same platform gives us a consistent benchmark for comparing the digital reach of two major sports brands.

Real Madrid is a useful example because it sits at the top of European football both globally and financially, while the Dallas Cowboys give us a benchmark from the American market as the highest-revenue franchise in the NFL. Real Madrid became the first football club to surpass €1 billion in annual revenue and currently has around 180 million Instagram followers. The Cowboys generated an estimated $1.23 billion in 2024, putting the two in a similar range financially, yet their Instagram following sits at only around 5 million. In other words, Real Madrid has roughly 36 times the following on the same social platform, while both organizations generate a similar level of annual revenue.

Of course, this does not mean Real Madrid should generate 36 times more revenue, nor does Instagram tell us how valuable each individual supporter is. The comparison is simply meant to put the difference in perspective. One organization has built a dramatically larger global digital audience, while the other has been able to generate a similar amount of revenue from a much smaller and more concentrated following.

That raises the question at the center of the monetization gap… Why does this difference exist, and how much of it can European football realistically close?

The difference between Real Madrid and the Cowboys does not mean European football can simply copy the NFL. The audiences, markets, and business models behind these numbers are very different. The NFL benefits from a concentrated and wealthy U.S. consumer base, while European football has built a much larger audience spread across countries with very different levels of purchasing power and consumer behavior.

Understanding those differences is important because not all of the monetization gap represents untapped value. Some of it comes from structural advantages that European football may never be able to fully replicate. However, when we zoom in and look at how the NFL monetizes its domestic audience and how Formula 1 has grown the value of its global audience, we can start to see where there may still be room for European football to improve.

The NFL has a few major advantages that help explain why it generates so much revenue from a more concentrated audience than European football. The biggest is who its core consumer is and how that consumer spends. The NFL primarily monetizes consumers in one of the wealthiest markets in the world, while European football’s audience is spread across countries with very different levels of purchasing power. A Manchester United fan in the U.S. and one in Nigeria may be equally passionate about the club, but their ability to spend around that relationship can be completely different.

Purchasing power is only part of it. American sports have also built a culture where spending is a major part of being a fan. NFL fans spend on expensive tickets, parking, food, merchandise, premium experiences, and media products. European football fans can be just as loyal, but millions live thousands of miles away from their club with fewer opportunities or less purchasing power to spend around that relationship.

The NFL is also structured to capture more of that spending. Its 32 teams collectively sell major media and commercial rights, while European football is fragmented across clubs, domestic leagues, UEFA competitions, countries, and broadcasters. With only 17 regular-season games per team, each NFL game also carries more scarcity and commercial value.

Infrastructure adds another advantage. Modern NFL stadiums can host concerts, sporting events, and entertainment throughout the year, while surrounding developments can include restaurants, hotels, retail, and other businesses. This creates revenue well beyond game day, while some European clubs still play in stadiums they do not own.

Compared with European football, the NFL combines a wealthy domestic audience with a business model built to capture more of that spending directly.

Formula 1 offers a much closer comparison to European football because it also has a massive audience spread across the world. When Liberty Media took control in 2017, F1 was already a major global sport, so the opportunity was to take that existing attention and build more ways to engage with fans and ultimately generate more value from them.

Liberty expanded F1’s digital presence by launching F1 TV in 2018 which helped push further into the U.S. market and created more opportunities for fans to interact with the sport outside of race weekends. F1 TV gave the sport a direct relationship with its audience rather than relying entirely on broadcasters, while the addition of races in Miami and Las Vegas alongside Austin increased its presence in the U.S. Drive to Survive and a stronger focus on social and digital content also helped introduce F1 to a younger and broader audience.

The financial results have followed. Formula 1 revenue has grown roughly 91% since 2017, reaching around $3.65 billion in 2024, while operating income before depreciation and amortization increased from roughly $481 million in 2016 to $791 million in 2024. F1 shows what can happen when an already global sports property becomes more intentional about turning attention into revenue. For investors looking at European football, that playbook is difficult to overlook.

The opportunity for investors is to build more ways for clubs to interact directly with their global fans. That could mean better memberships, direct-to-consumer content, merchandise, international experiences, digital products, and more personalized sponsorships. Clubs could also make being a fan more interactive by gamifying the experience through predictions, rewards, challenges, digital collectibles, fantasy-style games, and loyalty programs that keep supporters engaged beyond matchday. The bigger idea is to create a club-to-fan ecosystem where supporters can watch, play, shop, interact, and earn rewards directly through the club instead of having those experiences spread across broadcasters, social platforms, betting companies, retailers, and other third parties.

Similar to what the NFL has already capitalized on, physical infrastructure creates another opportunity. Stadiums and the real estate around them can become year-round entertainment assets through concerts, events, hospitality, restaurants, retail, and other experiences. The Sixth Street partnership with Real Madrid is a good example of this approach, with capital and operational expertise being used to increase the Bernabéu's revenue from both sporting and non-sporting events. Together, these strategies give clubs more opportunities to capture value both digitally and through the physical assets surrounding the team.

There is a limit to how closely European football can follow the NFL or Formula 1 playbook. The NFL operates as one league with 32 teams, while Formula 1 controls a single global championship. European football is spread across individual clubs, domestic leagues, domestic cups, UEFA competitions, national governing bodies, and different broadcasters. A Barcelona fan follows the same club throughout the year, but the commercial value of that attention is divided across LaLiga, the Champions League, the Copa del Rey, Barcelona itself, and the different partners that control those products.

That fragmentation makes it much harder for any one organization to control and monetize the entire fan relationship. The opportunity for investors is therefore not to turn European football into the NFL, but to identify the parts of the fan experience and commercial ecosystem that clubs can actually control. The more of that relationship a club can own directly, the more opportunities it has to turn its global audience into long-term revenue

European football does not need to become the NFL for the investment opportunity to make sense. The sport has structural limits, and not every part of the monetization gap can or should be closed. With some of the largest and most loyal fan bases in the world, even small improvements in digital monetization, commercial operations, and physical assets can create meaningful value over time.

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