John Textor agrees to sell Crystal Palace stake to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson

New York Times

4 hours ago

John Textor has agreed a deal to sell Eagle Football's 43 per cent stake in Crystal Palace to Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets, according to a person familiar with the proposal.
The sale will have to be ratified by the Premier League, with Johnson being the subject of the league's owners' and directors' test, a process which typically takes around two months. But with Johnson having owned the Jets NFL franchise for the past 25 years, it could be completed more quickly.
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Johnson has owned the Jets since 2000 after purchasing the franchise in a deal worth $635million. He was also a contender to buy Chelsea in 2022 before the Premier League club, a London rival of Palace's, was instead bought by the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital consortium.
The Premier League and the New York Jets have been approached for comment.
Should Johnson's purchase be approved it will mark the end of Textor's four years as the fourth general partner at Palace, alongside chairman Steve Parish and fellow U.S. businessmen Josh Harris and David Blitzer.
It has potentially positive implications for Palace's Europa League hopes, with UEFA deliberating over whether Eagle — via Textor — whose French side Lyon also qualified for the competition, have 'decisive influence' at Palace.
There had been concerns over Palace's eligibility to compete in next season's competition despite qualifying as FA Cup winners, due to Eagle's ownership of Lyon, where it holds a majority stake, putting them potentially at odds with UEFA's rules around multi-club ownership.
While the deadline for mitigations was March 1, UEFA may look favourably on the fact that Textor began the process of selling his shares in Palace last year, having hired Raine Group to find a suitable buyer. The deal, though, will not be completed before the governing body makes its decision.
Textor initially bought a 40 per cent stake in August 2021, investing £87.5m into the club but has been left frustrated by the lack of collaboration over his multi-club project at Palace. He has disagreed with Parish over the direction of the club and failed to increase his shareholding to take a controlling stake.
'We've reached the point where we have a significant investment in a club we hold in the minority (in Palace),' he told The Athletic last year. 'We're having extreme success in Brazil and early on in France, (and) to not have that same level of integration with our partner in the UK… it just becomes more and more clear that that level of collaboration we want and need works.'
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Eagle Football, which also holds controlling stakes in Brazilian top flight club Botafogo and Belgian side Daring Brussels, 'is simply not a perfect fit for Crystal Palace,' he added.
He last year explored the possibility of buying fellow Premier League club Everton before their purchase by the Friedkin Group, while he now has his sights set on Championship sides in England, with the hope that he can secure a new club before he begins his initial public offering (IPO).
Textor granted exclusivity to two groups in January, with a U.S. consortium of sport and entertainment executives originally backed by two Saudi brothers Haider and Mansoor Syed, having made an offer to buy Eagle's shares outright. Sportsbank, a sports investment group advised by the former Everton director and experienced football financier Keith Harris, was granted exclusivity to invest in Eagle. Both allowed their periods of exclusivity to lapse without concluding a deal. The U.S. group returned recently to hold talks with Textor with the intention of making an offer in excess of $200m with backing from an American group which has experience investing in soccer clubs.
Other offers were received by Eagle, believed to be in excess of that offered by Johnson, but they came too late.
Parish, Blitzer and Harris had the right of first offer to buy Eagle's stake in the south London soccer club and were approached by Textor, but according to sources familiar with the situation, their proposal fell short of being accepted.
After several false starts, and months of switching between trying to sell and hoping to take control at Palace, Textor finally looks set to depart the club.
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