ARES and Football Investment

Ares Management Corporation (ARES) is an established, leading global alternative investment manager, distinguished by its asset-light, fee-centric business model. The firm’s strategy encompasses complementary primary and secondary investment solutions across four core asset classes: credit, real estate, private equity, and infrastructure. As of the first quarter of 2025, Ares had accumulated $500 billion in Assets Under Management (AUM), reflecting their continued broad-based fundraising momentum.
The largest operational area of Ares is its Credit Group, which manages approximately $377.1 billion of the firm’s capital. This platform leverages extensive self-origination capabilities to provide flexible financing across the global credit universe, specialising in both liquid and illiquid strategies.
The firm’s ability to deploy capital across all levels of a company’s capital structure, from senior secured debt to common equity is a key competitive advantage.
Ares established its Sports, Media, and Entertainment (SME) investment vertical during the volatility of the COVID pandemic in 2020, recognising professional sports leagues and clubs as a novel class of assets requiring creative, flexible capital solutions. This commitment led to the closing of a dedicated fund for this strategy in 2022, securing $3.7 billion. The firm’s engagement in association football provides clear insight into how Ares’ sophisticated Credit Group structure capital for high-growth, often high-risk, international assets.
Analysis of Ares’ football financing highlights three distinct deployment strategies, each tailored to the client’s risk profile and capital need:

1. High-Risk/Opportunistic Debt: The provision of mezzanine-style loans at exceptionally high interest rates (up to 19.4%) to Eagle Football, the holding company controlling Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon). This exposure, which resulted in a $450 million default in October 2025, was secured by stringent security arrangements, including the equity stake in Crystal Palace FC, which Ares successfully leveraged for clawback recovery.
2. Hybrid/Infrastructure Finance: The $500 million Preferred Equity facility provided to Blueco, the owners of Chelsea FC, intended for long-term strategic projects like stadium expansion and multi-club platform development/
3. Strategic Equity: The acquisition of a significant equity stake in Atlético HoldCo, the majority shareholder of Atlético Madrid, positioning Ares for long-term growth participation.

These transactional structures demonstrate Ares’ advanced ability to deploy capital in situations that fall outside traditional corporate finance norms. The firm’s strategic focus on securing permanent capital and expanding its wealth and insurance businesses provides a stable funding base, allowing it to pursue long-duration, illiquid, and opportunistic investments. This mitigates the liquidity mismatches that often challenge conventional closed-end funds.
This operational flexibility positions the Ares Opportunistic Credit Group as a critical provider of crisis and growth capital, operating akin to a merchant bank for the rapidly institutional style, sports finance sector.

Ares Management Corporation: Corporate Profile and Financial Foundation

Organisational Structure, History, and Global Footprint

Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) is a global alternative investment manager founded in 1997. The firm was established by five co-founders: Antony Ressler, John Kissick, Michael Arougheti, David Kaplan, and Bennett Rosenthal.
It is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and maintains an expansive global reach, with over 2,600 employees operating across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.
The firm is structured around four complementary investment platforms: Credit, Real Estate, Private Equity, and Infrastructure. This structure is designed to allow Ares to invest across the entire capital stack, providing flexibility in diverse market environments and a competitive advantage vis-a-vis other capital providers. Geographically, specific strategies are tailored to regional opportunities; for instance, Ares Europe/Middle East strategies show AUM of $88.4 billion in Credit and $32.3 billion in Real Assets, while Asia Pacific strategies emphasise Real Estate Debt and Infrastructure Debt alongside targeted Private Equity.

Assets Under Management (AUM) and Segmental Breakdown

Ares has experienced robust growth, achieving AUM exceeding $500 billion as of the first quarter of 2025. This growth is broad-based, spanning all primary strategies. The scale of capital at their disposal provides significant capacity for self-origination and complex, large-scale transactions globally.
A detailed AUM breakdown as of June 30, 2025, underscores the dominance of the firm’s credit platform:

• Credit: Approximately $377.1 billion
• Real Estate: $108.7 billion
• Secondaries: $33.9 billion
• Private Equity: $23.8 billion
• Infrastructure: $21.1 billion

The sheer size of the Credit Group provides the foundation for Ares’ capacity to engage in bespoke, multi-billion-dollar financing arrangements, including those outside traditional corporate debt structures, such as the specialised sports finance deals.

Key Financial Performance and Income Streams

Ares Management Corporation is publicly traded under the ticker ARES. The firm reported significant financial metrics for the year ended December 31, 2024, with total revenue reaching US$3.885 billion and operating income recorded at US$946 million.
Net income attributable to Ares Management Corporation Class A and non-voting common stockholders for 2024 was $440.96 million.
The firm relies heavily on its management fee-driven business model for stability. A review of trailing twelve months Fee-Related Earnings as of June 2025 reveals the segmentation of reliable income streams:

• Real Assets Group FRE: $301.87 million
• Secondaries Group FRE: $158.05 million
• Private Equity Group FRE: $54.87 million

While the Credit Group holds the largest portion of AUM, the TTM FRE data demonstrates that the Real Assets and Secondaries platforms are highly monetised and provide substantial, structurally efficient, high-margin revenue sources. This strong, stable fee income base is crucial for balancing the capital-intensive deployment and potential volatility inherent in the firm’s opportunistic credit and private equity segments.

Capital Structure and Leverage Analysis

Analysis of Ares’ balance sheet reveals strategic use of leverage, particularly concerning its long-term deployment capacity.
The firm’s annual long-term debt was reported at $2.834 billion for 2024, a slight decline from $3.091 billion in 2023. Total Assets at the end of 2023 were $24.884 billion, offset by Total Liabilities of $18.060 billion.
A significant development in the capital structure is the sharp increase in long-term debt reported for the quarter ending June 30, 2025, which reached $4.342 billion. This represents a 60.58% increase year-over-year. A firm operating on a primarily fee-centric model minimises balance sheet leverage unless strategically necessary for major corporate activity, large co-investments, or the immediate warehousing of capital required to launch significant new platforms.
The increase in borrowed capital aligns with the firm’s public push to fund its long-duration, specialized strategies, such as the major sports fund initiatives and its expansion into wealth and insurance businesses. This strategic decision to employ increased leverage likely relates to funding immediate deployment capacity for large, potentially illiquid, long-term investments, thereby supporting the firm’s capacity to execute opportunistic transactions without relying solely on immediate client commitments.
The following table summarizes key corporate and financial benchmarks:
Ares Management Corporation Key Financial and Operational Metrics (Q2 2025 Focus)

Growth: Ares Credit Group and Direct Lending

Credit Platform Scale and Strategy

The Ares Credit Group is central to the corporation’s structure, managing approximately $377.1 billion in assets and offering a vast array of illiquid, liquid, and hybrid credit solutions. Ares has been instrumental in the rise of private credit, operating as one of the largest self-originating direct lenders in the U.S., European, and Asia Pacific middle markets. This capability allows Ares to act as a crucial financing source for small-to-medium sized enterprises increasingly underserved by traditional commercial banks.
The Credit Group’s strategies are diversified, spanning U.S. and European Direct Lending, Syndicated Loans, High Yield Bonds, Multi-Asset Credit, and specialized Alternative and Opportunistic Credit strategies.
The firm positions itself as a long-term, patient lender, leveraging its structuring expertise to invest across various corporate capital structures.

Investment Focus and Underwriting Philosophy

Ares’ underwriting philosophy is predicated on providing value-oriented direct lending.
The firm claims to target companies characterised by a history of stable cash flows, demonstrated competitive advantages, and experienced management teams.
For success in private credit, Ares emphasises core considerations: rigorous underwriting standards, the cultivation of deep borrower relationships through active origination networks, maintaining incumbency (staying invested as a firm grows), and operating at a scale that allows for market and sponsor diversity. This disciplined, diversified approach to lending minimises the reliance on external syndication and maximises proprietary deal flow.

The Opportunistic Credit Mandate and Flexible Capital

The Opportunistic Credit segment within the Credit Group is the primary vehicle for high-complexity, non-traditional financings, including most of the firm’s sports engagements. This group specialises in providing flexible capital solutions to healthy, stressed, and distressed companies, positioning itself strategically in the middle ground between traditional senior private debt and pure private equity.
The instruments offered by Opportunistic Credit are deliberately flexible and diverse, including secured debt, unsecured debt, delayed-draw facilities, preferred equity, common equity, and warrants. This flexibility is essential for addressing complex capital structure needs, such as supporting organic growth initiatives, navigating industry transformations, or assisting companies with cumbersome or unsustainable balance sheets.
The financing of European football clubs, notably through highly structured preferred equity and high-interest mezzanine debt, aligns perfectly with this Opportunistic Credit mandate. These transactions are complex, bespoke, and involve risks and return profiles unsuitable for the core Direct Lending business.
Ares utilizes its self-origination capability to structure proprietary, highly customised deals, such as the Blueco preferred equity facility or the highly secured debt provided to Eagle Football, that few traditional lenders or rival private credit managers can match.
This self-origination mechanism establishes a strong competitive advantage in novel asset classes like sports. Furthermore, the explicit ability of this group to leverage a public investment to position itself for a private follow-on opportunity underscores an aggressive, adaptable capital deployment model necessary for securing such highly valuable, yet volatile, sports assets.

The Sports, Media, and Entertainment Strategy

Strategic Rationale for Sports Investment

Ares has been active in sports investing for approximately 15 years, formalising its dedicated Sports, Media, and Entertainment (SME) investment strategy in 2020. The rationale for institutional investment in this sector is rooted in the (rather questionable) belief, articulated by CEO Michael Arougheti, that private equity capital fuels innovation and enhances the client experience in professional sports.
The firm has capitalised on the growing acceptance of external institutional capital by major leagues. By 2024, the National Football League (NFL) became the final major North American league to permit private equity investment, opening all five primary sports leagues to this asset class. Ares views sports assets, driven by predictable long-term media rights and engaged fan bases, as resilient to traditional economic cycles but often starved of capital necessary for infrastructure and strategic growth.

Dedicated Investment Vehicles and Retail Expansion

Although other private equity firms, notably CVC, have invested in sports and global media rights, Ares established a leadership position in this sector early, closing its first dedicated sports fund in 2022, raising $3.7 billion.
Ares is now actively discussing the launch of a new, semi-liquid media and entertainment fund explicitly designed for individual retail investors. This vehicle will target both debt and equity investments across leagues and sports businesses, aligning with the broader Ares Wealth Management Solutions (AWMS) push to provide financial advisors and their clients exposure to alternative assets. This push to “retailise” illiquid alternative assets serves a dual corporate purpose: not only does it meet growing demand from financial advisors, but it locks in permanent or near-permanent capital at the retail level. This retail funding base is generally less susceptible to immediate redemption demands than institutional capital during market downturns, thereby increasing stable, long-duration financing for Ares’ long-term, illiquid sports debt obligations.

Broader Sports Portfolio and North American Exposure

Ares’ portfolio demonstrates a clear focus on stable North American assets alongside high-growth global opportunities. In 2024, the firm acquired a 10% stake in the Miami Dolphins (NFL), signaling investment in highly stable, North American league franchises.
Beyond professional football, the SME segment covers a variety of assets, confirming a broad investment mandate:

• Sports and Entertainment Platforms: Including entities like 22 HoldCo Limited.
• E-sports and Video Games: Axiomatic, LLC, a premiere e-sports investment platform.
• Youth Sports: 3 Step Sports LLC, a provider of integrated youth sports solutions.

This portfolio diversification reinforces the view that the sports investment strategy is not solely focused on European football, but rather utilises the robust, long-duration revenue streams attached to top-tier sports assets as a credit quality floor. This makes the debt underlying these assets highly attractive to Ares’ insurance and pension fund investors.

European Football Engagements: Transactional Detail and Security Arrangements

Ares’ engagement in European football provides a textbook analysis of how opportunistic private credit funds deploy complex financial instruments and stringent security arrangements to navigate the high financial volatility of the professional sports sector.

Chelsea FC (Blueco) Preferred Equity Facility

Transactional Structure and Purpose

In September 2023, Ares Management provided a capital injection of $500 million (approximately £392 million) to Blueco, the holding company owned by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital that controls Chelsea FC. This facility was structured as Preferred Equity.
The funds were explicitly allocated to two high-priority strategic goals: facilitating the substantial upgrade and expansion of the 40,000-seat Stamford Bridge stadium (a project potentially costing over $2 billion) and supporting the acquisition of new clubs globally for Blueco’s multi-club portfolio (MCP), such as Racing Club de Strasbourg.

Security Arrangements and FFP Structuring

Preferred equity is a hybrid instrument, sharing characteristics of both debt (fixed priority return) and equity (subordinated to traditional debt). The arrangement positions Ares as having priority claims over the common equity holders. Crucially, the $500 million is secured against the holding company’s assets. While precise collateral details are private, high-value financing of this type is implicitly secured by future venue income streams, potential naming rights revenue, and the overall high-quality, long-term revenue streams of the Premier League club.
The use of “Preferred Equity” is considered a key regulatory arbitrage mechanism for major football clubs. This highly structured instrument allows ownership to inject large amounts of capital necessary for major infrastructure projects without recording the financing as conventional corporate debt, which could trigger negative scrutiny or violation of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations or indeed any future move by the Independent Football Regulator. This sophisticated structuring demonstrates Ares’ expertise in providing capital solutions that are regulatory-aware and optimised for the specific challenges of football finance.

Atlético Madrid Strategic Equity Investment

Transactional Structure and Rationale

In June 2021, Ares (through its Credit Group funds) acquired a 33.96% interest in Atlético HoldCo, S.L., which holds a 65.98% stake in Club Atlético de Madrid. This transaction was structured as a direct equity investment.
Mark Affolter, a Partner and Co-Head of U.S. Direct Lending at Ares, was strategically appointed to the Atlético HoldCo board, confirming the high-level, dedicated leadership committed to this asset.
The investment was strategic, capitalising on the club’s stable international brand equity and content value. The rationale was to support long-term growth and expansion opportunities.

Current Status and Dilution Risk

Atlético Madrid is currently pursuing substantial capital to fund its €800 million “Ciudad del Deporte” (City of Sports) development project. New institutional financing, expected to raise the remaining €555 million, will likely be structured as a capital increase. This mechanism allows the club to raise capital while maintaining the existing management structure but will result in the dilution of existing shareholders, including Ares Management, the CEO, and the Chairman. Ares’ risk here is long-term equity risk/reward, coupled with exposure to asset value appreciation driven by the new infrastructure.

Eagle Football (Lyon) Mezzanine Debt and Enforcement

Transactional Structure and Extreme Risk Profile

Ares provided substantial, high-interest financing to Eagle Football, the entity controlled by John Textor that owned Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon) and held a stake in Crystal Palace FC. These were classified as high-risk, mezzanine-style loans, with staggering rates demonstrating severe underlying credit risk: $300 million at 16%, $135 million at 18%, and a further $159 million at 19.4%. The total exposure was nearly $493 million.
The structure of this debt was typical acquisition finance for a multi-club platform (MCP), deployed by the Ares Opportunistic Credit Group in a situation where traditional lenders would not engage. The exorbitant interest rates signal that Ares was acting as a crisis capital provider, pricing the debt to account for extremely high perceived default probability.

Security Enforcement Mechanism and Default

In October 2025, Eagle Football defaulted on approximately $450 million of the loans owed to Ares Management. This event provided a critical test of Ares’ security arrangements.
Rather than proceeding immediately to liquidation, Ares agreed to a 12-month standstill period to allow Eagle Football time to restructure or sell assets. Critically, Ares had already executed a primary enforcement mechanism: the firm recovered a significant portion of its money when Eagle Football sold its 43% stake in Crystal Palace for £190 million, with most of the proceeds immediately channeled to Ares to cover debt obligations.
This outcome validates Ares’ structural approach. The firm secured the loan not against the more volatile, operationally struggling Lyon entity, but against the highly liquid and realisable equity stake in the more stable, high-value Premier League club, Crystal Palace FC. This strategy of cross-collateralisation across various jurisdictional assets ensures recovery even when the primary operational asset defaults, demonstrating sophisticated risk mitigation for aggressive, high-yield debt. The ability to execute a pre-arranged, secured asset clawback confirmed the effectiveness of the firm’s approach to the complex financial risks within the multi-club structure.
The following table summarizes the key football engagements:
Ares Management Football Investment Portfolio: Financing Structures and Security Arrangements

Corporate Governance, Key Personnel, and Ownership Structure

Founders and Executive Leadership

Ares Management Corporation was co-founded in 1997 by Antony Ressler, John Kissick, Michael Arougheti, David Kaplan, and Bennett Rosenthal. The current organisational leadership remains strongly tied to the founding group:

• Antony Ressler: Co-Founder.
• Michael Arougheti: CEO. He is also a vocal proponent of private capital expansion into professional sports leagues.
• Bennett Rosenthal: Co-Founder and Partner, serving as Chairman of the Ares Private Equity Group.
• Mitch Goldstein: Partner and Co-Head of the Ares Credit Group, highlighting the executive focus on the firm’s largest business segment.

Leadership in Sports Finance

The dedicated leadership for the firm’s specialization in sports and entertainment is critical for executing complex transactions in this vertical. Mark Affolter serves as a Partner, Portfolio Manager, and Co-Head of Sports Media and Entertainment. His appointment to the board of directors of Atlético HoldCo, S.L. in connection with the 2021 investment demonstrates his direct involvement in managing major European football exposures. He also served for a short period on the board of Eagle Football Holdings.
Significantly, the leadership of the SME strategy includes a Co-Head of U.S. Direct Lending, suggesting that Ares views sports investment primarily as a highly sophisticated credit and debt structuring challenge, rather than a purely private equity ownership play. The deployment of bespoke debt and hybrid capital solutions (preferred equity, secured mezzanine debt) is confirmed as the primary value creation mechanism in this sector, requiring the expertise of senior credit professionals.

Public Ownership Dynamics (NYSE: ARES)

Ares Management Corporation (ARES) is characterised by substantial insider control, which fundamentally influences its risk appetite and strategic horizon.

Principal Holders

The ownership structure reveals that control is concentrated among the founders and affiliated holding companies:

• Antony P. Ressler: Holds a 35.50% stake.
• Ares Partners Holdco LLC: Holds a 35.00% stake.

This collective insider control, totaling roughly 70% of the reported top stakes, provides the executive team with significant strategic autonomy. This control enables the management to pursue aggressive, high-risk, long-term initiatives, such as the volatile high-interest debt extended to Eagle Football—without succumbing to immediate pressure from external shareholders who might prioritize short-term quarterly stability over long-term strategic asset development.

Institutional Ownership

Despite the heavy insider concentration, Ares also maintains strong institutional backing:

Vanguard Group Inc.: 10.03% ownership.

• BlackRock, Inc.: 5.20% ownership.
• Wellington Management Group LLP: 6.40% ownership.

The presence of these major institutional holders demonstrates overall market confidence in Ares’ asset-light business model and stable, fee-driven revenue base. The total number of institutional owners is 1347, holding over 237 million institutional shares.

Conclusion and Risk/Opportunity Assessment

Synthesis of Ares’ Capacity to Manage Asset Risk

Ares Management Corporation’s operational strategy is centered on leveraging its immense scale (over $500 billion AUM) and the stability provided by its massive Credit Group and high-margin Real Assets/Secondaries platforms to fund complex, volatile, and highly profitable exposures generated by its Opportunistic Credit segment.
The firm’s strategic shift toward perpetual capital structures, including the expansion of its insurance business and the proposed semi-liquid retail sports fund, is a sophisticated corporate maneuver to ensure long-term, patient funding for inherently illiquid assets like sports franchises and infrastructure projects. By matching liability duration (from insurance and pension funds) with asset duration (long-term club revenue streams), Ares significantly mitigates the typical liquidity risks associated with private market deployment.

Validation of Opportunistic Credit through Default Scrutiny

The high-profile default by Eagle Football (Lyon) on its $450 million mezzanine debt in October 2025 provides crucial empirical evidence validating Ares’ structured approach to risk management in this sector. The transaction, priced aggressively at rates up to 19.4%, necessitated exceptionally rigorous security.
The swift recovery mechanism—the clawback of capital secured against the liquid equity stake in Crystal Palace FC—demonstrates that Ares’ structural expertise anticipates default. By cross-collateralising debt across multiple, often multinational, assets within a multi-club platform structure, Ares transforms high-risk debt into secured, enforceable credit. This capability confirms Ares’ position as not merely a passive lender, but as a specialised crisis capital provider and de facto workout specialist for the global football finance market, a unique competitive advantage that solidifies its leadership in this nascent asset class.

Outlook for the Sports Asset Class

The formalisation of the Sports, Media, and Entertainment strategy, coupled with the move to attract individual investors via a semi-liquid vehicle, confirms that high end professional sports is transitioning from an opportunistic venture to a core, long-term institutional investment vertical for Ares. The increasing acceptance of private capital across all major global sports leagues, recognised by Ares CEO Michael Arougheti, suggests continued long-term stability and growth. This institutionalisation is expected to drive further demand for the highly customized, FFP-aware financing structures—such as preferred equity for infrastructure and high-yield, cross-collateralized debt for acquisitions—that Ares is uniquely qualified to provide.