KCup17 said:
That's not the point I'm trying to make here. Let's set aside the issue of who the owners are for a moment. We can all agree on the moral issue that is presented by the Saudi's owning a club.
The point I was trying to make is around the wealth of the ownership group relating to the size of the club and supporters of other clubs response to that. The current perception (at least in my experience) is that wealthy owners should buy wealthy clubs. The outrage or hate towards a club increases when a wealthy owner comes in and buys a relative mid-sized club and turns them into a domestic giant. One could use Man City or RB Leipzig as an example. In Germany, everyone hates RB Leipzig because Red Bull went in and bought a minnow club, re-branded, invested and raised them into being a domestic giant. Whereas if that big corporation had purchased a larger club say a Schalke or Hannover the response would have been different.
Leipzig homer here so I have to disagree and defend this. Leipzig is light-years different from City and PSG.
A) Red Bull sells sodas; it's not an evil sovereign petrostate.
B) Red Bull had to make a 10 year decision and buy a 5th tier club. Rules prevented them from buying anything larger. The fact that they skirted these rules is the reason for the angst - not the fact that they bought small… Leipzig was a major metro area that lacked good football since it was East German; so while Red Bull bought a small club, they were buying into a large untapped market… and it paid off; locals love having a top flight club, and one that isn't overrun with politically extreme ultras like the other tiny local Leipzig clubs are. Most neutrals outside Germany and many inside admire the fact that Red Bull invested in East Germany. There's still a ton of economic consequences from the Cold War. Consider that just this year, BMW finally decided to level the playing field and let workers in their Leipzig plant work fewer hours to match the work week of their West German counterparts.
C) Finally, and this is perhaps the most salient difference: Red Bull are using the club (and their larger soccer empire) as a revenue stream. Sure, they enjoy the free advertising to some extent, but they are specifically designed to be an independent revenue generating enterprise. Soccer makes money for Red Bull; they're not writing blank checks, it was an investment. They're well known and respected by neutrals for their ability to shrewdly buy young players for cheap, get them Champions League experience via Leipzig and Salzburg, and then sell them for large profits. It's completely an opposite situation than City or PSG, whose owners are willing to write blank checks with no expectation of getting a return. It's why they're always skirting FPF rules, whereas Leipzig have no issue there.