London One of the oldest soccer teams in the world is having serious problems.
More than 3,000 travelling supporters will not be seated to support their cherished side, known as the Owls, when Sheffield Wednesday FC begins the new season on Sunday away at Leicester City in the Championship, the second division of British football.
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Instead, they will stage a five-minute demonstration outside King Power Stadium in Leicester against one man: Wednesday’s owner, Thai millionaire Dejphon Chansiri, who is at the center of a developing crisis that could endanger the team’s very existence.
Aside from the opulent wealth of Manchester City and Liverpool, the team’s financial troubles are getting worse, and failed attempts to sell it have dominated local sports media and online forums for months. The situation has far-reaching effects on the state of English soccer.
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Because of the severity of the issue, the British government has established a new law that will establish a football regulator to oversee team purchases and sales and ensure that owners are suitable.
In the case of Wednesday, which was established in 1867, that might be too late.
While some clubs had a rough offseason, Wednesday has caused even more upheaval this summer: in four of the previous five months, players and staff have not received their paychecks on time. Consequently, even if the club could afford to acquire new players, they are prohibited from doing so until January 2027 due to a transfer embargo.
There are hardly enough players to fill a matchday squad of 11 starters and up to nine substitutes because at least 15 players have left this summer on free transfers or for a small portion of their market value.
According to Dan Fudge, co-host of the well-liked podcast The Wednesday Week, it’s turning into a soap opera.
According to Fudge, podcasters typically struggle to find topics to discuss throughout the summer, but it seems like we have a fresh timeline of terror to discuss each week.
The list of accidents is endless. By mutual consent, talented young head coach Danny Rohl—a charming and intelligent German who was predicted to have great success in major European leagues—left.
Literally, the renowned Hillsborough Stadium is collapsing. The large 9,000-seat North Stand was denied a safety license by Sheffield City Council because of worries about exposing wiring and terrace fractures.
In a statement released this week, the club stated that it was attempting to resolve the issue and that if it was still closed by the first home game on August 16, it would look to relocate season ticket holders. This week, a disabled fan who has an accessible seat in the North Stand sobbed as he told the BBC how the problem is affecting him.
A request for comment from NBC News was not answered by the club.
Though no one has yet to meet his price for the club, which football financial experts feel is too costly, Chansiri insists he wants to sell. The club was reportedly offered 100 million pounds ($134 million) by the owner. The genuine value, according to prominent British football finance analyst and commentator Kieran Maguire, is 40 million pounds ($53 million). However, in June, Chansiri stated that he turned down an offer from a U.S.-based group at this amount.
Although it was improbable that Wednesday would completely collapse, Maguire stated that the team would most likely be demoted to the league below and have a very difficult season nonetheless.
According to Maguire, he is extremely ignorant and lacks industry understanding, but he is not evil in the sense that he does not wish to damage the football team.
The culture of English football is one of spending. The 20 Premier League teams have spent over 1.8 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) on transfer fees this summer alone, with Liverpool, the defending champions, spending 252 million pounds ($335 million).
Additionally, there is a clear distinction between the top and the lower rungs of the football pyramid structure.
According to consulting firm Deloitte, the Premier League clubs collectively earned over 6 billion pounds ($8 billion) in revenue during the 2024–25 season, a 36% increase over the previous year.
For the second consecutive season, all of the teams in the Championship, the fifth-most popular league in Europe, experienced operational losses over the same time frame.
Clubs are forced to rely on player sales and, if they’re lucky, wealthy benefactors to inject cash because of the high salary expenditures. Other sources of income include TV, sponsorship, player sales, and match day revenue.
On Wednesday, the English Football League announced that it was in advanced talks with Chansiri’s attorneys over the sale of his ownership position in the team. The Thai magnate was cautioned by the league, which several supporters blamed for not taking action sooner, that the club either fulfill its responsibilities or fulfill its promise to sell to a well-funded party for fair market value.
Is there any chance that things could grow worse? Most likely.
The National League, the fifth tier of English football’s expansive pyramid-shaped league system, which places elite teams at the top and smaller, more local clubs at the bottom, suspended Morecambe FC, a team from the northwest seaside town of the same name, this week.
Morecambe may permanently vanish if a new buyer who can sustain it cannot be found after it fails to fulfill its financial obligations. Macclesfield Town, Bury, Hereford, and a few other teams that had too many liabilities and owners unable to support them experienced this.
The atmosphere of the club is one of dread. Fudge stated, “We’ve seen other clubs do it, and usually at the last minute someone comes in and [stages] a takeover.”
When you see teams like Bury and Morecambe in recent years, and they haven’t had that white knight coming in, we suddenly think, “Oh, hold on a second, we might be the big scalp.”
Fudge, like many fans, knows just who is to blame. Despite the warning indicators that have been there around Chansiri since roughly 2018, we have arrived at this point due to pure incompetence.
Supporters have fond memories of the 1990s, when England internationals Chris Waddle, David Hirst, and Des Walker played alongside some of the best players in Europe at the time, helping the team finish seventh in the Premier League in the 1996–97 campaign.
When Chansiri took over in 2015, supporters were hopeful. Thai Union Group is a seafood company that owns the Chicken of the Sea canned tuna brand in the United States. The squad advanced to the 2016 Championship playoff final, just ninety minutes away from a return to the Premier League, thanks to his promises and some success.
All of this seems like a very long time ago, and supporters are curious about the new football regulator’s form and potential impact.
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A lifetime supporter of Wednesday, David Blunkett, a prominent minister in Tony Blair’s administration in the 1990s and 2000s and currently a member of the House of Lords, participated in an online meeting with the football league on Thursday. According to him, it is imperative that the Wednesday problem be resolved before the regulator is established.
He told NBC News that lawmakers, especially those from the city, the Supporters Trust, and other supporters, will undoubtedly keep up their pressure for a speedy settlement of the Hillsborough tragedy.
As the football craze swept through working-class communities across the North and the Midlands, Wednesday, who hails from the north side of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, a city known for its steel, became an early member of the Football Association (the term soccer is an abbreviation of association).
Cricket gave the team its unusual moniker: Several teams played this game in Sheffield in the middle of the 19th century, and the Wednesday squad formed a football team. The moniker stayed.
To maintain that history, supporters will hoist banners and yell slogans on Sunday. even though some people would prefer to simply watch the game.
Many individuals are firmly in the camp of “let’s protest, let’s spread this message as much as we can,” which I wholeheartedly support. However, Fudge noted that this is not everyone’s cup of tea because many people use football as a way to spend time with their loved ones.
Wednesday sold out its allotment of 3,287 away tickets for Sunday’s game, despite the chaos surrounding the club. The number of additional Wednesday games is not yet known.
