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PAUL JOYCE
Why Everton owner The Friedkin Group has put club up for sale

Less than two years after buying the club, valued at £800m, Dan Friedkin is selling up after poor window and having never been to a game or spoken to David Moyes
Friday October 09 2026, 10.49am, The Times

Contrary to widespread belief, Everton did not miss out on just one striker during the summer transfer window but two.

The deadline day saga over Folarin Balogun, who backed out of a move from Monaco at the last minute, provided a dramatic denouement to the summer window and left David Moyes with depleted attacking resources.

There was an element of bad luck surrounding the USA forward, whose medical had earlier revealed a problem — and matters spiralled from there.

Thierno Barry of Everton reacts after a missed chance during the match against Ipswich Town.

It was, however, a failed move for the Manchester United youngster Ethan Wheatley in August that first raised doubts around Everton over the commitment of The Friedkin Group (TFG) to fully revitalising the club it had purchased in December 2024.

Wheatley had been identified as one of a number of young players who could boost Everton’s youth ranks and push for involvement in the first team. Several million pounds had been set aside to recruit the 20-year-old forward and three or four other talents, but the plug was pulled on the deal as Wheatley travelled for a medical.

The budget was no longer being made available for such signings by TFG, with the American group’s appetite for leading Everton forward clearly waning. Wheatley is now on loan at Lincoln City.

Indeed, there was no great appetite to make any senior-level signings unless players were first sold, which nearly led to a fan uprising when plans to offload Harrison Armstrong to Nottingham Forest for £35m emerged. That proposal was hastily abandoned, only for Iliman Ndiaye to then join Manchester City for £65m.

Confirmation on Friday that TFG, headed by the billionaire Dan Friedkin, is now exploring the potential sale of the club is not surprising, although the timing of the announcement blindsided executives. An asking price of about £800m, inclusive of debts of about £380m, has been mooted. The clarity over TFG’s position suggests it is confident that a sale can be completed this season, with the investment bank Moelis & Company leading the process.

There is no doubt that TFG has helped Everton. The club’s financial problems under the former owner, Farhad Moshiri, meant the threat of administration loomed.

But finances have been stabilised, debts have been refinanced and the move to the club’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium was completed in August 2025. This is not going to be the fire sale of a distressed asset and TFG will hope that competitive tension increases the purchase price.

However, throughout TFG’s tenure, which has not yet reached its two-year anniversary, doubts have always existed regarding its true desire to oversee Everton’s transformation.

Friedkin’s conglomerate, which also owns Roma, purchased Everton from Moshiri in December 2024

Moyes’s recent admission that he has never spoken to Friedkin — who has also never spoken to the chief executive, Angus Kinnear, face to face — was damning. Friedkin’s son-in-law, Rishi Majithia, has been the manager’s point of contact.

That could have changed last week, when Friedkin and his son, Ryan, who is the vice-president of Roma (one of the other clubs under their football umbrella), were in Scotland to play golf in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. However, no contact was set up. Instead, the duo spoke to Tommy Fleetwood, an avid Everton fan. Handicaps, rather than Hull City away on Sunday, are likely to have been up for discussion.

Moyes said he had never spoken to Friedkin, left, pictured with Everton fan Fleetwood and his son, Ryan, last week. In addition, Friedkin has never been to an Everton game, and when you consider the club has left Goodison Park and relocated to Hill Dickinson during TFG’s ownership, that also represents an oversight.

Given all that, suggestions that Friedkin has asked for Zoom meetings about Everton to be recorded rather than have to attend them seem plausible.
“They never gave themselves the chance to fall in love with Everton,” one source said of the owners.

Ultimately, a number of factors have forced TFG’s hand, not least the price of running a football club in the Premier League. It seems preposterous that someone as successful as Friedkin did not recognise there would need to be a financial commitment to Everton each season, or that the squad TFG inherited required an overhaul.

No club has a net spend of zero season after season and makes progress, but somehow this seems to have come as a shock to the Everton owner. It is estimated that a five-year capital requirement of about £450m is needed (interest payments on the stadium are £40m a year, for example), which represents a large chunk of change.

That is money TFG may not have at its disposal considering it is pursuing an agreement with the NHL to bring a 33rd expansion franchise to Texas in either Houston or Austin. That would cost about £2.6m, even before a stadium is built and a team recruited.

A further complicating factor in TFG’s vision was revealed by The Times last month and concerned Uefa’s multi-club ownership rules, which prevent teams owned by the same group from playing in the same European competition. This creates an issue for Everton and Roma.

Owning two clubs of virtually the same size — Everton were ranked 24th and Roma 27th in Deloitte’s Money League for 2026 — always had the potential to create a conflict of interest.

Will Uefa’s multi-club rules weaken US owners’ commitment to Everton?
TFG briefed that it had a “structural solution” to Uefa’s rules without ever expanding on what that was, but recently conceded that was not the case.

It means that if Everton and Roma both qualified for the Champions League, only one would be able to take part as things stand, and TFG’s bonds with Roma are stronger. Work on a new stadium for the Italian club is due to start next year at a cost of €1bn (about £850m).

There is the option of placing one of the sides — clearly that would be Everton — in a blind trust by March 1, which hands day-to-day running of the club to independent lawyers.

In that scenario, however, there is little point in being owners any more and that is not conducive to attracting minority investment.

Instead, a full sale is being considered. In many ways, this could be construed as a good day for Everton. If the present custodians do not have the hunger to lead the club forward, then there is no point in them hanging around.

At 800m Everton are a bargain, one of the old school giants of the game, a founder member of both the football league and premier league, one of the few clubs to have never been relegated out of the prem, brand new stadium on the Liverpool waterfront, fanatical fanbase, one of the traditional big 5.....in true FSG/moneyball style they are well undervalued by the market