Sheffield Wednesday takeover news may concern some - they've been stung before | OneFootball

Reports that the takeover of Sheffield Wednesday could yet hit the rocks would be extremely worrying for Wednesdayites who've seen this all before.

The protracted nature of the takeover of Sheffield Wednesday could be on account of concerns over the prospective new owners' source of funding. It's another worry that the club's fans could do without.

Without so much as a goal since Boxing Day and with just one win from open play in all competitions all season, 2025-26 has been a season of calamity upon calamity for Sheffield Wednesday.

Transfer embargoes put in place by the EFL over financial mismanagement and the club being pushed into administration have ensured that there was little to no chance of Wednesday's team being competitive at all this season, though the extent to which they've been unable to compete has outstripped even the most pessimistic of pre-season prognoses.

The silver lining to all of this for fans has been the end of the ruinous ownership of Dejphon Chansiri. Sheffield Wednesday have been out of his hands since the 24th October, and although the team's fortunes haven't improved on the pitch since they entered administration, there was at least the hope of a better tomorrow.

But it's now February, and nothing has improved. It had been hoped that the sale of the club could be completed by the end of 2025, in order that a rebuild of some description could begin with the January transfer window. This, however, has now passed, and there now may be further complications with the consortium who were confirmed as preferred bidders for the club on Christmas Eve.

Gambling connections are causing a significant delay to Sheffield Wednesday takeover ratification

Writing in the Guardian on the 30th January, journalist Matt Hughes explained why the takeover of the club by the consortium fronted by former Sheffield United advisor James Bord is taking so long: "The English Football League is taking its time assessing the prospective buyout of Sheffield Wednesday to establish whether the purchase would be largely funded by the proceeds of gambling and crypto-gambling operations."

The consortium hoping to buy the club is made up of three people, of which two have connections to the gambling industry; Bord himself and Felix Boemer, who owns a crypto-gambling casino and sports betting site called Gamdom, which is an offshore operation registered in the Comoros Islands, with the third being Alsharif Faisal Bin Jamil, who's believed to be a member of the Jordanian royal family. The bidders have stated that the money being used to fund their takeover of the club is coming from other investments.

Gambling has been banned by the FA across the board since the 1st August 2014. Under their rules, players, managers, club employees and match officials are prohibited from betting on anything related to worldwide.

Exceptions were allowed for pre-existing club owners such as Brighton's Tony Bloom and Brentford owner Matthew Benham, and they are subject to stringent conditions to continue to trade in the way that they did before. It isn't clear whether a similar level of grace would be offered to the prospective new Sheffield Wednesday owners.

The issue is also a political hot potato which the EFL cannot afford to get wrong. As per Hughes' report, the MP for Sheffield South East, Clive Betts, has expressed serious reservations: "The source of funding has to be a concern, given the inherent volatility of those industries," Betts said. "Even if the EFL approves the takeover, what level of sustainability is there? These are issues that need to be addressed. I’m sure the regulator will be taking a close look, as even if they aren’t running the ODT [the Owners & Directors Test] they could inherit these owners. This is a massive test for the regulator. Given the nature of the bidders they will want to ensure there’s a thorough process, and it could take a long time."

In the event that the Bord consortium bid is rejected, the club will have to be put back up for sale. If the last time this happened is anything to go by, it's unlikely that the 25p in the pound threshold for creditors required to avoid a further points deduction would be met, and this would mean that the club would start the 2026-27 season with a 15-point deduction.

This is the big selling point of the Bord consortium's bid. It allows for a completely clean slate. But if the offer to buy the club doesn't reached the required level, the ghosts of the Chansiri era will continue to live on at Hillsborough for another full season. In addition to this, the calibre of player that Sheffield Wednesday will be looking at for the squad rebuild that the club so desperately need may well be put off by starting the season so far adrift at the foot of League One.

Sheffield Wednesday fans have had their finger burned by rejected takeover bids before. As recently as spring 2025, two bids for the club from an American consortium were rejected by Chansiri, who described the first of them as "derisory". Florida-based property investor John Flanagan and Sheffield-born business manager Adam Shaw had big plans for the club, but this all feels like a long time ago already.

For now, all Sheffield Wednesday fans can do is watch and wait. For the time being, there seems to be no end to their torment, either on the pitch or off.