Fireman Ed will have to find his British equivalent soon.
With the NFL expanding into the European market by hosting international games in London, Dublin, and Berlin, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson has done some expansion himself. The owner has finally secured a stake in a Premier League soccer team.
Johnson, a former United States ambassador to the United Kingdom under the first Donald Trump administration, has agreed to a $254 million/£190 million deal to buy a 43 percent stake in the Premier League team Crystal Palace, according to ESPN. Johnson will be acquiring this stake from his fellow American businessman, John Textor.
“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," Palace said in a statement, per ESPN. "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."
New York Jets owner buys stake in Crystal Palace Football Club
For the deal to go through, Johnson will have to pass the Premier League’s Owners and Directors’ test, aka the Fit and Proper Persons Test.
The deal will allow Crystal Palace to play in next season’s UEFA Europa League. There were issues surrounding Textor’s Eagle Football Holdings group having a controlling stake in the French football club, Lyon. UEFA rules prevent two teams with the same owners from playing in the same competition unless shares of one club are placed into a blind trust.
Textor failed to do that for either Palace or Lyon by the March 1 deadline, and he was reportedly looking to offload his Palace shares.
Johnson attempted to purchase Chelsea after the U.K. sanctioned the team’s previous owner, a Russian oligarch by the name of Roman Abramovich, over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
British Football owned by Americans
In August 2024, Sportico reported that Americans owned 45 percent of the Premier League. Johnson’s acquisition of Crystal Palace doesn’t change this, as it’s shifting hands from one American to another.
However, a few months later, The Friedkin Group, which is reportedly looking to expand the NHL to Houston, acquired Everton, bringing the number of American owners up to 50 percent, according to AS.
Some other teams owned by Americans are:
- Arsenal (Stan Kroenke, owner of the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche) Aston
- Villa (Wes Edens, co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks)
- Bournemouth (Bill Foley, owner of the Vegas Golden Knights)
- Chelsea (Todd Boehly, part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers)
- Fulham (Shahid Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars)
- Liverpool (Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox)
- Manchester United (Glazer Family, which owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
Woody’s kids better start playing EA Sports FC 25
In 2024, The Athletic reported that Johnson scuttled a trade between the Jets and the Denver Broncos for wide receiver Jerry Jeudy. Why? Woody reportedly “felt Jeudy’s player rating in Madden NFL, the popular video game, wasn’t high enough.” Jeudy went to the Cleveland Browns and had his first 1,000-yard receiving season in his career.
The report claimed that Johnson “denigrated his own players in the locker room and seemed to follow decision-making advice from his teenage sons, according to various team and league sources. And the proposed Jeudy trade wasn’t the only time Johnson cited ratings from the "Madden" video game when evaluating players.”
Afterwards, "Madden" took a jab at the Jets by bumping up Jeudy's rating. With his new team, Woody better get his kids a copy of EA Sports FC 25.