Football as a credit asset class
Ares Management is a global alternative-asset manager with roughly $644bn under management and a dedicated Sports, Media & Entertainment vertical established in 2020. It is the clearest practitioner of football-as-credit: it lends structured, often PIK-heavy debt rather than buying equity, and enforces when borrowers default. Its portfolio spans Atlético Madrid, Inter Miami, McLaren, Chelsea financing — and the Eagle Football loan that has just blown up.
The headline 2026 event is the Lyon write-off: Ares enforced its floating charge over Eagle Football, but the collateral — a debt-laden Ligue 1 club — sold for $30m against a $547m secured claim. Crucially, Ares is expanding into sport at the same moment, launching a retail-accessible European sports fund, treating Lyon as a single bad credit rather than a repudiation of the thesis.
Scale, portfolio, and the Lyon loss
How the firm actually deploys
Ares is the clearest case of football as a credit asset class: it lends PIK-heavy secured debt rather than buying equity, then enforces when borrowers default. Lyon is that model's first big public failure — the enforcement worked legally, but the collateral was worth a fraction of the loan, and the floating-charge shortfall runs into the hundreds of millions before any club recoveries.
The portfolio nets out very differently from the Lyon headline. McLaren delivered a profitable exit and the Apollo-led Atlético recapitalisation was a mark-up event, so the franchise is far from a uniform loss. And Ares is institutionalising the thesis precisely as it absorbs the Lyon write-down — launching a retail sports fund — treating the loss as one bad credit, not a reason to retreat from the asset class.
Direction in 2026
The posture is expansion into sport even while booking the Lyon loss. The open questions are Ares's net recovery on Eagle/Lyon once Botafogo and RWDM resolve, whether it was bought out or remains a secured creditor in the Kang deal, whether the loss hardens its underwriting on future football credit, and how much capital its new retail sports fund raises. For a Ledger reader, Ares is the test case for whether structured private credit can be lent against football clubs at scale.
- Ares Q1 2026 results; Cork Gully filing; theesk.org analysis
- Bloomberg (Ares/Lyon); Apollo releases (Atlético); Ares IR (McLaren exit)
- PE Insights (Chelsea facility)
- Note: AUM ~$644bn; Ares retains a minority in Atlético; exact Lyon recovery undisclosed