New York Jets owner Woody Johnson agrees to buy stake in Crystal Palace from John Textor

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.

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.

Johnson, 78, was the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2017 to 2021 and is estimated to hold a net worth of $3.3billion (£2.5bn), per Forbes.

Crystal Palace later confirmed the proposed sale. “Crystal Palace Football Club can confirm that Robert Wood Johnson, ‘Woody’, an American businessman and co-owner of the New York Jets, has signed a legally binding contract to purchase Eagle Football’s holding in the club,” a statement read.

“Whilst the completion is pending approval from the Premier League and Women’s Super League, we do not envisage any issues and look forward to welcoming Woody as a partner and director of the club.

“We would like to go on record to thank John Textor for his contribution over the past four years and wish him every success for the future.”

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, has ‘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.

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Why is Textor selling?

Speaking to The Athletic on Monday, Textor explained: “I believe Eagle is probably known to be the most collaborative multi-club in terms of the player movements between the clubs. We have something called roster optimisation where we are looking at what each player needs and wants and what each club needs and wants, and then we fill the gaps in our squads.

“Collaboration helped us (Lyon) bounce off of the relegation zone at mid-season right in the Europa League and now in our second season in the Europa League, that comes from collaboration. It has helped us go from second division to champions of South America (with Botafogo) and collaboration is how we just beat PSG.

“It has disappointed me that our English league partner (Palace) has chosen not to accept any of our obviously qualified players from top teams, top leagues, and top national teams, and so to really promise player pathways to the players that we meet in different parts of the world, we have to have a collaborative UK partner. It’s a must. It is our promise to the athletes, it’s our promise to the community. That collaboration needs to go two ways and it doesn’t currently with Crystal Palace. That’s the reason we chose to sell.

“We’re turnaround guys, we like a construction project. There’s nothing more exciting for me than the idea of buying a second division team and getting promoted. But we might also look in the Premier League if we think there’s a real opportunity to catapult a team from mid-table to upper-table, we think we’re capable of doing that. Our strategy for Palace was to get to the Europa League every year, not just off of a cup win every hundred years.”

How did we get here?

Textor initially bought a 40 per cent stake in August 2021, investing £87.5m into Palace, but has been left frustrated by the lack of collaboration over his multi-club project. He has disagreed with Parish over the direction of Palace and failed to increase his shareholding to take a controlling stake.

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“We’ve reached the point where we have a significant investment in a club we hold in the minority (in Palace),” Textor 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.”

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.

The 59-year-old 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).

Crystal Palace won the FA Cup in May (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

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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What does this mean for Palace?

For now, not a huge amount will change. It is unclear how much Johnson intends to be involved in matters but Textor only had a minimal input in any case, with Parish remaining executive chairman. There is unlikely to be so much disagreement as with Textor given the other three general partners were required to give their approval to the sale.

Palace are keen still to redevelop their Selhurst Park stadium, and have the option of funding via debt on the table, but Johnson is likely to be required to at least contribute some financial backing for it alongside the rest of the club’s owners.

It remains uncertain whether UEFA will accept the deal having been agreed subject to the owners’ and directors’ test as sufficient to admit Palace to the Europa League, but it may decide that Textor had no decisive influence.

Further information was requested from Palace which raised hopes that they are leaning towards approving their participation in the competition. A decision is expected before the end of this month.

Johnson is the former U.S. ambassador to the U.K, taking up the role during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2016. He is heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company’s fortune.

(Top photos of John Textor and Woody Johnson: Lucas Figueiredo/Getty Images / Ed Mulholland/Getty Images)

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