David Beckham and Gary Neville plan on lifting Salford City to new heights after completing a takeover of the League Two side as part of a fresh consortium that has committed to injecting significant funds.
Beckham and Neville were already part-owners of the north west club — currently playing in the fourth tier of English football — along with other former Manchester United team-mates, nicknamed the ‘Class of 92’.
Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Phil Neville and Paul Scholes have relinquished their stakes, but will continue to occupy various positions at Moor Lane.
Since the departure of majority shareholder Peter Lim in 2024, Beckham and Neville have spent months seeking investment partners who they believe give Salford the best chance to succeed on and off the pitch.
Among the options they considered were multi-club models and a direct owner, however those were felt not to present “authentic” opportunities.
Beckham and Neville ultimately decided to join forces with Declan Kelly, founder of U.S.-based advisory firm Consello, and Lord Mervyn Davies, chairman of the Lawn Tennis Association. They will co-chair Salford’s board of directors.
Other members of the new Salford ownership group
- Frank Ryan (Co-chair, co-CEO, Americas Chair, DLA Piper)
- Shravin Mittal (founder of Unbound and managing director of Bharti Global Ltd)
- Nick Woodhouse (executive vice chairman, Authentic Brands Group)
- Colin Ryan (chief strategy and corporate development officer, Qualcomm)
- Dream Sports Group (Indian sports technology company)
The collective are believed to have raised around $15-20million to boost Salford’s sporting and infrastructural ambitions over the next five years. Inside that timeframe they are targeting promotion to the Championship.
Each member will hold a 5 per cent or 10 per cent stake, totalling at 80 per cent. The remaining 20 per cent has been earmarked for additional partners.
None of them will have day-to-day involvement — interviews are taking place to appoint a chief executive and that person will drive matters on the ground — but their influence is set to be felt across the operation.
“I will be over every big decision that’s made and every little decision that’s made,” Beckham, who also co-owns Inter Miami in Major League Soccer, told The Athletic during an exclusive interview. “That’s what my commitment is to Gary. It’s what my commitment is to the club.”
After the initial 2014 acquisition, Salford enjoyed a spectacular rise that featured four promotions in five years. However, they have not climbed the ladder since then and finished just outside the play-offs this season.
“We’re definitely not doing it for a laugh and it’s also not for the romantic side of things,” Beckham continued. “Yes, we care about the club — but we’re doing it to win. We want Salford to be successful and we have had success, but then we want it to go on to the next level.
“I always dream big so I’m always going to want us to get to the pinnacle of football and be in the Premier League. But there’s a lot of hard work and a lot of investment to be done up until that point.
“The Championship is a league that we want to get in but it’s step by step. We want success very quickly but these things take time.
“There’s a reason why we’re not going to be going up this year. So what is that reason? How do we solve it? And what do we need to put around the team, the manager and the club to ensure we have that success?
“But if we can do that, fast forward it and be up in the Championship, that’s what the dream would be.”
The progress of Wrexham and Birmingham City under their own big-name backers serve as examples of what it is possible to achieve.
“We’ve all been inspired by what Ryan Reynolds has been doing at Wrexham and I’m not saying this is why we’re doing it because it’s not,” Beckham adds. “But I’ve spoken to Ryan about it so many times now and he said the feeling around the city, the feeling around the club, is so exceptional. That’s the kind of thing that we want to create.
“Tom Wagner and Tom Brady have done an incredible job with Birmingham. I went to a game a few months back and the atmosphere in the stadium was one of the best I’ve seen for a long time. That’s what we want to create. We want to create that community, add to the community and fan base we’ve already got — and then lift it.
Beckham attended this season’s League One fixture between Birmingham and Wrexham with Brady (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
“When you see what the Toms are doing, there is investment, there is a plan and it would be the dream to talk about the growth of Salford City.
“It’s not only growth on the field, which is what we care most about, but we want success. Because if we’re having success then we’re also having the opportunity to say: ‘Now we we’re going to invest, now we’re going to get a bigger stadium, now we’re going to get a bigger training facility and then it will go on. That is what we’re aiming for.
“We’re not going to turn around and say: ‘OK, there’s a bunch of money, we have no plan but we have the money and now we’ll go and get the players’. That’s not how we work in business. It has to be sustainable.
“It has to be a real plan around the club because we want to be taken seriously on the field, firstly, and then on the business side. We don’t want to look stupid or make the mistakes that others have in the past.”
Salford’s journey was chronicled in a 2015 behind-the-scenes television programme and they intend to ramp up commercial projects to propel revenues. The aim is to reverse the trend of making a financial loss.
“I think we were the first to have a fly-on-the-wall documentary series,” said Neville. “That model has been saturated by many clubs. I think we’ll take this forward with a different type of content and production model.
“I feel very strongly that owners are just guardians of football clubs for fans and the idea is that fans should have access behind the scenes to what people are doing in the club. It’s almost like a public company and it should be treated as such because of its importance to the community.
“We’ve never been shy in coming forward in respect of content for the club and that will be the same moving forward. But there are different innovative ways that can be done that isn’t just a straight documentary.
Neville has been involved at Salford since 2014 (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
“We have to be successful on the pitch, we have to invest in the local area and we also need to look at our infrastructure; the stadium and training ground. We’ve invested heavily over the last 10 years and we’ll invest heavily again in this next four or five years — but we need to get this club on a firm footing financially and get balance into this club.
“There are very good examples of clubs in League Two, League One and the Championship who are almost sustainable, with a little bit of owner funding. They have created a player trading model and financial and commercial revenue streams that mean that they can look at things slightly differently and be successful, whilst being more sustainable.”
What the pair appear fiercely determined not to lose sight of is the original reason they formed an association with Salford and for Beckham in particular this link is viewed as his legacy in British football.
“I grew up in the east end of London but moved to Manchester when I was 15 and lived in Salford; I actually bought my first house there and it’s the first house that me and Victoria lived in together,” the former England captain recalls. “I trained in Salford for many years at The Cliff. So, it’s always been a special place from day one.
“Owning a club in a place where I grew up as a young kid means so much. Salford is actually everything that I love about football. Real people, real players, tough league, tough players.
“We always talk about Manchester United as a family club. I’m still going back now and meeting people who worked there when I first arrived at 10 years old. That means something and Salford is like that. You have people turning up to watch their local team and who have done that for years — it’s a family environment and that’s what I love about it.”
Neville concludes: “A lot of people talk about exit strategies when they’re investing into a business but this is a football club, a sense of duty, loyalty and love that has grown for me over the last 10 years of watching every single Salford game.
“David and I are not majority owners but the importance of accessibility, looking after local people, looking after the fans, investing in the area, making sure we do this for the right reasons and that the people coming in with us are doing it for the right reasons is why we chose this route.”
(Top photo: Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images)