Five clubs are foreign owned – and the trend continues: these are the ownership structures of the Super League clubs

This means that five of the twelve Super League clubs are now in foreign hands: Lugano, the two Lausanners, GC and Yverdon. Rising trend. In the recent past, horror was not far off when foreigners invested in Swiss football. The fear of another case of Tschagayev raging on Xamax was too great.

Best example Lugano

Lugano in particular shows that serious investors from abroad are also attracted to Switzerland. Since 2021, the strongman in Ticino is called Joe Mansueto. During the corona crisis, the American took over the Bianconeri and has been leading them closer to the national top ever since. How serious he is was shown again two months ago when he made 16 million Swiss francs available for the stadium project.

In Lausanne, too, work is serious. In Switzerland’s fourth-largest city by population, the two promoted teams Lausanne-Sport and Stade-Lausanne-Ouchy (SLO) are led by foreigners. The British chemical company Ineos has been running the traditional club since November 2017 and led the club straight back to the top division after relegation a year ago.

At the newcomer SLO, Vartan Sirmakes, born in Istanbul but Armenian, has been in charge since 2019. In 1991, together with the talented watchmaker Franck Muller, he founded the eponymous company in Geneva. The “balance sheet” estimates his fortune at 700 to 800 million francs.

Unclear goals for the Hoppers

The Chinese are also rich and have been using GC since the spring of 2020. However, instead of waking up the dormant record champion, they developed him into the unofficial farming team of Premier League club Wolverhampton. How long is unclear. Owner Jenny Wang is currently exploring the market to sell the club. Will GC soon be Swiss again?

The five clubs mentioned face seven with Swiss ownership. YB (Rihs), FCZ (Canepa) and Winterthur (Brothers Keller) are run by a Swiss family. There is also a majority shareholder in Lucerne. Several lawsuits are currently pending. By contrast, Basel and St. Gallen rely on a model without a majority shareholder, while Servette is backed by the Fondation 1890 led by Didier Fischer. Rolex is one of the donors.

However, these examples do not change the fact that, as in all of Europe, clubs in Switzerland are becoming more and more foreign owned.