Who is the owner of Brentford?

Who is the owner of Brentford?

After 74 long years in the lower tiers of English football, Brentford are promoted to the English top-flight. The Bees will feature in the top-flight in 2021/22. But how did this happen? All these became possible because of the keen interest by the owner of Brentford. Who is the owner of Brentford then? It is none other than Matthew Benham. Brentford were struggling to keep themselves because of the loan but the new owner of Brentford made it possible with his strong determination.

The story of Matthew Benham’s Brentford takeover

A decade ago, The Bees were playing in League Two with a fanbase of 4000 attending the playoffs finals. The promotion earned them a good chunk of money. However, it was the investment of Matthew Benham that helped the club in their meteoric rise in English football.

Matthew Benham was a childhood fan of Brentford and raised a loan of $700,000 to bring the club out of financial troubles. He also promised Bees United, the fan owners, to provide a loan of £1million a year for five years without any interest rate. However, the investment raised to £20 million temptings the fans to hold a meeting. In the meeting, they demanded him to buy the club out rightly.

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At present, Matthew Benham has invested an amount of just over £100 million in his boyhood club. With the promotion, the club has earned substantial money in the region of £300 million due to parachute payments and television money.

How rich is the owner of Brentford?

Matthew Benham_The Owner of Brentford

If you think that Matthew Benham has a stake only with Brentford, you are wrong. Benham also holds the stake of the Danish outfit, whose name looks like a wi-fi password, FC Midtjylland. His statistical approach to buying the stakes has helped him to amass a huge amount of wealth and reinvest in the right ones. He used a parameter, expected goals, to buy the stakes of Brentford.

Matthew Benham was a banker before becoming the “Moneyball”. He worked for the former owner of Brentford, Tony Bloom in 2001. Considering his previous success, he was offered to work with Bloom Premier Bet. However, the minor scuffles with Tony Bloom led to his departure from Bloom Premier Bet and joined the SmartOdds. He drove the company’s revenue single-handedly and saw a meteoric rise in his net worth. However, his net worth is not available in the public domain. It is estimated that his net worth would be around 30 million euros according to various sources.

What is the worth of Brentford? Are they in debt?

Compared to the English Premier League regular clubs, Brentford is valued at a very low price. They are valued at €109.25m according to the standard sports valuation outlets. Despite the lower valuation, Brentford are not a debt-free club. In 2019/20, it was reported that Brentford’s debt rose by £17 million to increase the debt from £57 million to £74 million. Also, Brentford had cash liabilities of £15 million which are the salaries of the players.

Despite being one of the clubs with debt, Brentford pays a very less interest as the owner is providing the loan at very low interest rate or considered as a “soft loan”. However, the club can erase their debts if they survive the 2021/22 Premier League campaign.

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