Interested Rangers investor names figure to buy out major Ibrox players as he splashes cash with Hollywood stars
American businessman Scott Galloway revealed investors would need to pump up to £40MILLION into Rangers to become a major player at the club.
The son of a Scottish immigrant, Galloway is a professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business as well as an entrepreneur, podcast host and public speaker. Galloway revealed last summer he scrapped plans to make an approach to takeover Rangers because he didn't want to become “the most hated person in the UK”.
But he has now invested in football as part of a star-studded consortium who took over Bogota-based Colombian side La Equidad earlier this year. Others involved are Wrexham owners and actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney along with fellow movie stars Eva Longoria and model Kate Upton.
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Galloway discussed the takeover of the South American side in his The Prof G Pod and that led to him talking about his potential involvement in Rangers again - and the kind of numbers it would take to take over some of the major shareholders.
He explained: "I've always wanted to invest in a soccer team. I love football, I recently went to a PSG game with my eldest. We've joked about it and laughed about it, but I'd enquired about investing in Rangers in Glasgow. But quite frankly, I'm just not in that weight class.
"Rangers, you would need to come up with an eight-figure sum of money. You need to come up with $10m to $50m (£8m to £40m) to be a really legitimate part of their owner group. So that's out of my weight class, much less a Premier League team who are now going for billions. So this was a fulfillment of something I've wanted to do for a long time. I want to take my friends and my sons to the games. That was the initial impetus, if you will."
Former chairmen Dave King and Douglas Park are the biggest shareholders at Rangers with 14 per cent and 12 per cent of the club respectively. Eight other groups hold stakes of less than 10 per cent, including fans’ group Club 1872, which owns 4.96 per cent. South African businessman King is viewed as a willing seller having previously held talks about offloading his stake to Club 1872
US businesswoman Kyle Fox withdrew her investment plans in 2023 when Ibrox shareholders gave her the short shrift. She claimed that certain conditions attached to her interest weren’t met with shareholders reluctant to sell.
A report in business outlet City AM said last year Fox wasn’t involved but “other US investors are understood to be considering making bids for a minority stake,” adding that they valued the club at around £150m with King viewed as a “willing seller”.
Galloway made his money founded and selling several tech firms and also served on the board of directors of companies such as the New York Times and Urban Outfitters - and claims he rounded up a 14-man consortium to takeover Rangers. However, speaking last year he told how the plan came to an abrupt halt after speaking to a close ally.
He said: “I got together the wealthiest, most famous Scottish people in the US, about 14 of us, and said lets go buy Rangers FC - because it's a publicly traded company. I had it all figured out, a £10million convertible note.
"Then a friend of mine who is a famous Scottish historian said ‘you’d be the most hated person in the UK'. He goes 'you know nothing about football, you’d be some American idiot over there’ and I was like yeah you’re right. He is like 'just go to Rangers games, what are you thinking?”
