Manchester City, the English Premier League soccer club, is well-known for striking splashy deals to acquire the world’s top soccer talent.

During this season’s trading window, the club’s most significant addition wasn’t a young striker or a talented midfielder. It was a 39-year-old astrophysicist turned hedge fund analyst.

Laurie Shaw has joined Manchester City to lead “artificial intelligence insights.”

Moneyball Madness
An unlikely soccer club executive, Shaw studied astrophysics at Cambridge and Yale and worked at algorithmic hedge fund Winton Capital Management. For the last five years he worked as a statistician at the U.K. Treasury.

Now Shaw is playing a role in what has been described as an “arms race for Ph.D statistics and physics talent” to help use big data to better compete on the pitch. Shaw will use his big brain to:

• Work on player identification, recruitment and individual development, pre and post-match analysis, and recruitment of coaches.
• Build machine-based models to better manage player fatigue, injury and illness.

Liverpool, last year’s Premier League champion, has reportedly pushed heavily into data science. Experts say the move contributed to its first league title in 30 years.

Billy Beane SPAC Fail
Last year Billy Beane, the baseball executive who was depicted in the film Moneyball, launched a SPAC to bring the same big-data tactics to Wall Street.

His SPAC, called RedBall Acquisition, was in talks to acquire a minority stake in the parent company of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC. Last week the deal reportedly fell apart as RedBall couldn’t secure enough outside capital at the proposed price.

The Takeaway: Red Sox fans won't be able to buy stock in the team any time soon.

The Boston Red Sox missed the playoffs this year, but champagne showers may still be in the cards.

John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox and European football club Liverpool FC, is in talks to bring his sports teams to the public markets in yet another 2020 SPAC merger.

According to the WSJ, Henry's Fenway Sports Group is contemplating a merger with a special purpose acquisition company called RedBall Acquisition Corp.

The Players
RedBall, the brainchild of former Goldman Sachs partner Gerry Cardinale and MLB legend Billy Beane, raised $575 million in August to acquire and optimize sports teams through an analytics-heavy approach.

John Henry bought the Red Sox in 2002 and Liverpool FC in 2010. And he's had a nice run:

• After an 86 year drought, the Red Sox have won the World Series four times since 2004 and, pre-COVID, regularly packed the stands with a devoted fan base.
• Liverpool won its first English league title in 30 years this summer and last year won the prestigious UEFA Champions League to become champions of Europe.

Deal Details: RedBall will raise another $1 billion to purchase a 25% stake in Fenway Sports Group, which is being valued at roughly $8 billion.

Why It Matters

While many top-tier European football clubs are publicly listed (including England's Manchester United and Italy's Juventus), publicly traded sports teams are a relatively untested concept in the U.S. The few exceptions include:

• Liberty Media owns the Atlanta Braves, but the baseball team is a subsidiary of a much larger company.
• The NFL’s Green Bay Packers are owned by shareholders who mostly consist of fans.

A deal for Fenway Sports would be a significant endorsement for the MLB, which has been the hardest hit of the professional sports leagues because of its heavy reliance on ticket revenue.

The Takeaway: RBIs, home runs, strikes, outs, and… return on invested capital. Add financial returns to the list of stats to track.