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Teddy Sagi has reportedly entered into negotiations to become a professional sports franchise proprietor.
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According to reports Israel’s billionaire owner of the Playtech gaming company, Teddy Sagi , is looking to acquire a sports franchise. He Might buy British Football Club Reading.
Sagi flew in by helicopter to the Madjeski Stadium in Berkshire west of London on Wednesday to look into the possibility of buying the Reading Football Club. He was met in the parking lot there by the team’s owners Sir John Madjeski and its CEO Nigel Howe.
The football club is only in England’s second tier league. Mr Madjeski has been quoted as saying that he would prefer to sell the team to someone with “big pockets” and Sagi certainly qualifies as such.
It is not clear, however, if British Football officials will look favorably on one of their franchises being bought out by someone so closely tied to all sort of gambling, including sports book. In any event, Mr. Madjeski is only the team’s minority owner and the sale talks are said to be only in a preliminary stage.
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The Reading Football Club is nicknamed the Royals because it is located in the royal county of Berkshire. With a history dating back to 1871, the team made it to the Premiere League for the 2012-2013 season, but fell back down before this year’s season began. That was only the second time in the Club’s history that it competed in the Premiere League.
That year the the club lost £2 million with a total of £59 million in revenues, and it had £38 million in debts at the end of June 2013.
Reading has never won a league title and its home stadium seats only 25, 000 fans
Sagi, rated as one of the world’s twelve most eligible bachelors by Forbes Magazine, has dated celebrities such as fellow Israeli Bar Rafaeli and the current Miss Israel Yael Nizri.
With an estimated networth of $2.3 billion, Teddy Sagi is the founder and 33% owner of Playtech. The self made 41 year old Israeli entrepreneur is also the owner of TradeFX which runs Markets.com and SafeCharge, an on line credit card payments company.
Two months ago he sold a 15% stake of Playtech for $544 million. Sagi also owns real estate in Tel Aviv, London and Berlin.
Plyatech Plc is a software gaming company founded in 1999. It develops software for on line gambling companies like casinos, poker rooms, bingo, sports betting, scratch games and fixed odds arcade games. It is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange, having gone public in 2006.
