How much Mike Ashley bought Newcastle United for as Sheffield Wednesday takeover is eyed | OneFootball

The ex-Newcastle chairman has been heavily linked with a potential takeover in S6

The ongoing takeover saga at Sheffield Wednesday continues to rumble on well into the current 2025/26 season, with players, staff and supporters growing increasingly worried about the club's immediate future.

Such worries have only deepened in recent days too, as controversial owner, Dejphon Chansiri, remains at the forefront of Hillsborough headlines for all the wrong reasons.

A chain of damning events since the turn of the calendar year has led to such a drastic plight in this part of the Steel City, with the club going from a steady and respectable mid-table position of 12th in last season's Championship to being viewed as dead certainties for a return to League One after three seasons.

Unsurprisingly, masses of locals have continued to voice their displeasure towards the recently unseen or unspoken chairman, with a series of six transfer or registration-related embargoes imposed by the EFL and a transfer fee restriction in place until at least next summer, leaving current boss, Henrik Pedersen, with such limited resources to work with when it comes to his playing squad - the vast majority of whom have been thrust from the Under-21 setup at Middlewood Road purely out of necessity in order to fill the required number of players on matchdays.

Those players have also failed to receive their monthly wages on time in five of the past seven months, before it was revealed that the South Yorkshire side are 'days away' from potential administration and a winding-up petition from His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) as Chansiri is yet to pay an outstanding tax bill of £1m.

This comes amid claims that he is holding out for £100m before he passes the baton on to another custodian, with the likes of ex-Newcastle United chairman, Mike Ashley, heavily linked.

With that being said, FLW looks at how much the Walsall-born businessman acquired the Magpies for back in the summer of 2007.

How much Mike Ashley paid for Newcastle United as Sheffield Wednesday takeover links intensify

Ashley rose to business fame over several decades after initially founding Sports Direct - now Frasers Group - at the age of just 18 back in 1982, eventually acquiring control of several brands, as well as becoming stakeholders in others.

By the summer of 2007, he'd also bought Sir John Hall and Freddy Shepherd's respective shares in the North East club in a combined deal reportedly worth £134m, with the club managed at the time by former icon, Kevin Keegan.

Despite initially being viewed as a popular figure that would join the 'Toon Army' in away ends at grounds across the country, it was later revealed that Ashley was unaware that the club was over £100m in the red, and that he'd done no due diligence on the club pre-takeover.

Just 14 months into his reign, Ashley was the subject of major protest following Keegan's exit in September 2008, putting the club up for sale amid fears of his personal safety when attending matches at St James' Park alongside 52,000 other spectators.

At the end of the season, Newcastle were relegated to the Championship for the first time since 1993, but would immediately return to the Premier League following a title-winning campaign under Chris Hughton.

The sportswear tycoon became immersed in even more controversy when St James' Park was rebranded as the Sports Direct Arena in November 2011, a decision which was reverted 11 months later.

After six seasons back in the top-flight, which included one campaign in the UEFA Europa League, Newcastle were relegated back to the EFL in 2016, but again, immediately returned under Rafael Benitez and have stayed there ever since.

Ashley would invest the highest sum of cash in a player during his reign in 2019 after parting with £40m to secure the services of Joelinton from TSG Hoffenheim, before his tumultuous reign as owner concluded in October 2021 following a £300m deal by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund.

Since then, he controversially took control of Coventry City's CBS Arena in November 2022 and threatened the Sky Blues with a near-immediate eviction notice, before City chairman Doug King paid Ashley almost £40m for the stadium and adjacent land in August 2025.

Sheffield Wednesday supporters could welcome Mike Ashley takeover despite past Newcastle United tensions

As highlighted, Ashley hasn't been far away from controversy, but those aforementioned instances haven't been anywhere near as wild as what Chansiri has been at the forefront of.

At this point, many Wednesdayites would most likely welcome any potential bidder or ownership group in order to kickstart a major refresh, which is likely to properly begin in League One next season unless Pedersen and his side pull off a miraculous escape against relegation.

If Ashley was to take control, based on his previous ownership of the Geordies, Wednesday supporters would hope that, for one, he has learned what gets fans onside and what doesn't, and they may be content with a slow and steady rebuild, as long as his financial backing is perhaps slightly greater than what it was perceived to be on Tyneside, albeit the two predicaments cannot really be compared.