Sheffield Wednesday takeover: Who is in the mix after James Bord deal collapsed? | OneFootball

Sheffield Wednesday are back on the market following the collapse of Bord's bid to buy the club, so here's everyone who's been connected with them.

Financially troubled Championship club Sheffield Wednesday are back on the market following the collapse of the James Bord bid, so here's everyone who's been connected with a revised bid for them.

So far, 2026 hasn't brought much of a change of fortunes for Sheffield Wednesday, either on or off the pitch. Relegation from the Championship came about in record time, the quickest in the entire 138-year history of the EFL, and they may even achieve the unique feat of becoming the first League club ever to be relegated with a negative points total.

And off the pitch, things have been little better. As January wore on, it started to feel as though there was something distinctly 'off' about the bid that had been made by a consortium fronted by professional gambler James Bord.

The consortium's gambling links were coming under serious EFL scrutiny, and by the time it completely fell to pieces, that it wasn't going forward didn't feel like quite the surprise that it might have done.

The upshot of all this is that Sheffield Wednesday are back on the market, and that everybody is back to square one in terms of what the future of this venerable old club might look like. There is still interest in buying the club, although it now seems unlikely that they will be able to avoid a 15-point deduction in League One next season, so here's everyone who's been connected with a move for the club since Bord's bid imploded.

Mike Ashley

The former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley is the highest-profile of those who've expressed an interest in buying Sheffield Wednesday, but he's also arguably the most contentious. Ashley's previous £20 million offer to buy the club was widely regarded as a "low-ball" offer and felt like it would easily be outbid by others.

And while there has been much talk in recent days of the £100 million that he would be intending to invest into the club, it should be added that, considering the extent to which Sheffield Wednesday's already threadbare first-team squad might be even thinner by the summer and the amount of work required elsewhere around the club, this might not even be the enormous amount of money that it's been trailed as being.

And on top of that, Ashley's previous involvement in football can hardly be said to have been without controversy. There were sustained protests against him at Newcastle, while there also protests against him north of the border at Rangers, and he hardly endeared himself to Coventry City fans when, having bought their CBS Arena home, he issued the club with an eviction notice as part of a dispute over the terms of their lease then.

That has all been resolved with the stadium eventually being sold to the Coventry owner Doug King, but it can hardly be said that he's not a contentious figure.

The Storch Family & David McEvoy

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the statement issued by the Storch family on the eve of the collapse of the Bord bid for the club was a canary in the coalmine for what came next.

The group had been considered to be amongst the front-runners to buy the club out of administration, thanks in no small part to their connections to the billionaire investor and music agent David McEvoy, whose artists included the Sheffield-based band Reverend & The Makers.

David Storch had previously openly discussed his interest in the club, and was the third of the final three - alongside Bord's group and Ashley - in December. At that time, he said: "We've put in an offer. We feel that it's a fair offer and satisfies our interpretation of the rules and the laws of the land. We will not move forward with a 15-point deduction. The offer that we've put in has a requirement that stipulates that we will not accept the 15-point reduction."

The statement issued following the club's relegation from the Championship after losing at Sheffield United on the last weekend of February indicated that their interest hasn't gone anywhere, while the previous comments indicate that this bid may be the club's best chance of swerving that much-discussed 15-point deduction for next season.

Anders Holch Povlsen

There had been talk that Anders Holch Povlsen, the Danish billionaire owner of FC Midtyjlland, could be tempted back to the negotiating table if, as seems likely this time around, the bidding for the club is at a substantially lower level than it was in December.

Hopes of a revival of this bid, however, didn't last for very long, with the BBC's Dale Johnson reporting swiftly afterwards on the social media platform X that, "Anders Holch Povlsen will not be reviving his interest in Sheffield Wednesday." Given Povlsen's wealth - Forbes reported that he's worth $16.8 billion (£12.6 billion) in May 2025 - and his previous experience of running a club in Denmark, this news will have been a disappointment to many Sheffield Wednesday fans.

Ryan Howsam & Simon Jordan

Another potential bidder who was connected with a potential purchase of the club was the Dubai-based insurance mogul Ryan Howsam, who is connected with the former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan.

But there are two possible major issues with any potential Howsam bid for the club. Firstly, he was reported by the Sheffield Star last week to have said that, "there's no way I will be paying the minimum amount to get the club without a sanction", referring to the EFL's rules on buyers of clubs in administration having to meet a dividend threshold to creditors of 25p in the pound in order to avoid a further 15-point deduction next season.

And secondly, recent global events may have extremely suddenly and unexpectedly shifted Howsam's focus away from making a bid for Sheffield Wednesday. Since Howsam either is or was Dubai-based, his mind may well be focused on other matters at the moment, and time is certainly starting to become of the essence, in the case of the sale of Sheffield Wednesday.