Multiple club-owner 777 – a US private investors group – has a patchy record in honouring its financial commitments and is the subject of several court actions in the USA. So who are they, and where does the money come from?
By Paul Brown and Philippe Auclair
This article was updated on Thursday 21 September at 13.37 CET with a comment from 777 Partners regarding Joshua Wander.
The name of 777 Partners barely registered in the football world until September 2021, when the "Miami-based alternative investment firm" acquired 99.99 percent of the shares of Genoa CFC for an estimated 150 million euro.
Football had been a footnote in the list of multiple activities – from controversial payday loans to super-low cost aviation – of the group founded in 2015 by US businessmen Joshua C. Wander and Stephen W. Pasko. They'd bought a small stake in the multiple Europa League champion Sevilla FC in 2018, purchasing an extra 1200 shares two years later, upping their stake in the Spanish club to 7.5 percent of its capital (*). And that was that, as far as football was concerned.
Yet, in less than two years, 777, a private company which insists does not invest other people's money, but only the wealth of its owners, has become a multiple club owner only surpassed by a handful of operators such as Abu Dhabi’s controlling entity City Football Group in terms of the depth and breadth of their investments in club football.
Sevilla was the water-tester, Genoa CFC the springboard...
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