The American lifestyle personality Martha Stewart has become the latest celebrity to become a co-owner of Swansea City football club.
Stewart will join the rapper Snoop Dogg and the footballer Luka Modric as a minority owner of the Welsh club, which plays in the second tier of England’s football pyramid. The announcement was made in a post on the club’s website by two of its owners, Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen. The post did not disclose the size of the investment.
The move underlines the increasing influence in British football of US owners, who appear to be drawn by the strong heritage and potential financial returns, at least for clubs below the Premier League.
The retired American football star Tom Brady is a minority owner at Birmingham City, while Stewart attended last week’s last-gasp 2-1 comeback against Wrexham AFC, a north Wales club that has secured three successive promotions thanks to the heavy financial backing of the Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, who has changed his name from Rob McElhenney.
Reynolds and Mac have created a Disney television show tracking their fortunes with Wrexham. The Guardian has revealed that Wrexham received an unusual grant of £18m from the local council to help build a new stand in its stadium.
Swansea City are also looking to buy its council-owned stadium, the club’s chief executive told a podcast last month.
Stewart is often credited as the first self-made billionaire in the US, after building a huge retail and lifestyle brand around her catering company. She has written 99 books, according to her website.
The “Martha Stewart” brand has been sold several times and remains well known, particularly in the US despite her 2004 conviction for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and other charges in the relation to her sale of shares in the company ImClone Systems. Stewart served five months in prison.
In recent years she has struck up a perhaps unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg, appearing with him at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The size of the celebrities’ minority investments has not been disclosed. However, neither Snoop Dogg nor Modric, who joined AC Milan this year from Real Madrid, are listed as persons with significant control of the club on the UK companies register.
Cravatt and Cohen, who together co-founded Los Angeles marketing company Centerfield, pointed to the “increased exposure and increased visibility we have as a club following the additions of Snoop and Luka to our ownership group”.
The addition of Stewart does not appear to have added significant resources for transfers. Cravatt and Cohen said that “we do not expect the January window to be a particularly busy one for Swansea City” under new head coach Vítor Matos. They pointed to Matos’s experience in developing young players.
Cravatt and Cohen wrote: “We are very excited to welcome Martha onboard, and we know experiencing Friday night’s game in-person has only increased her own enthusiasm and anticipation for being part of Swansea City.”
Swansea City have been owned by an American consortium since 2016, although Cravatt and Cohen took control last year.
