The approval of the Lei da Sociedade Anônima do Futebol (SAF Law) has led many
popular Brazilian football clubs to change their structure from an association to a so-called
clube-empresa (club-company). The first ones to do it understood it as an opportunity for a
fresh start regarding their financial situations and accepted millions in investments from private
investors. This brought up the importance of valuation in a market that had never been officially
evaluated before.
Inspired by this ongoing movement and its unprecedented nature, this work aims to
understand better the connection between a football club s formal valuation and the amount
investors are actually paying for them.
To shed light on this topic, firstly, two valuation methods are applied to Botafogo, one
of the first Brazilian clubs to become a SAF. With an objective to have a benchmarking
reference of a deal already done, the results from the Discounted Cash Flow and Tom
Markham’s multivariate model are compared to the value paid by John Textor. Then, one of
Brazil’s biggest clubs, Corinthians, is thoroughly studied with the same two methods in an
attempt to estimate a fair value for a possible future sale.
Botafogo’s Equity Value estimated at 393 million Reais was a little under the 444
million Reais valuation made when it was acquired. Meanwhile, Corinthians 1.3 billion Reais club
value reached via Markham’s method is consistent with other deals already done in Brazil.
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