A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 17
Okay, I’m going to try a second bite at the apple. Yesterday’s story idea was American football in Switzerland. Today it’s about an American involved in football (read: soccer) in England: Billionaire invests in English soccer club:
LONDON -It’s hardly on the same level as the takeovers of Liverpool or Manchester United.
But American tycoon Robert Rich Jr.’s investment in an amateur soccer team in northeast England has fans of Bedlington Terriers dreaming of the big time.
“Mr. Rich said he wants to help the underdogs and he wants to help Bedlington achieve what they are capable of,” Terriers club secretary David Collop told The Associated Press on Thursday. “This is like a fairytale come true with him getting involved.”
Bedlington is nowhere near the stature of Liverpool, which was bought by the owners of the Boston Red Sox last month for $476 million. And it’s hardly on a par with Manchester United, which was bought in 2005 by the Glazer family, the owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in a leveraged buyout worth $1.4 billion.
Instead, the tiny club way up north is in the ninth tier of English soccer and only five years ago nearly went out of business. Now the club has a wealthy benefactor in Rich, a 69-year-old businessman from Buffalo, N.Y., who owns three minor league baseball teams.
“Could the Bedlington Terriers become an international brand — even an international icon?” Rich said in The Journal in Newcastle, without answering his own question. “We’re having fun.