It is not the first time that happens (there is the precedent of Manchester City with the Girona, a club that acquired in 2017) but the novelty is that now the Premier League also puts her eyes on the Spanish clubs of modest football.
This has been confirmed on Tuesday with the operation of the property of the Mérida Sports Association (heir of that team that in the 90s played two seasons in the First Division) to the Best Trying Analytics Limited (BIA) company, a British holding created in 2025 whose only owner is the operating company of the Brentfor Football Club, English team located today located in the middle of the table (11th place) of the English First Division. In fact, this weekend he tied at home with Arsenal (1-1), Real Madrid’s rival in the Champions League.
BIA is a British holding company created in 2025 for investments in football clubs and one hundred percent of its shares are controlled by the entrepreneur Matthew Benhamfounder in 2004 of the statistical research company Smartodds and owner of the Matchbook betting house. With him as owner, the club of western London has risen from the third division to the Premier League (2021).
Benham He was also a majority shareholder of the Danish Midtjylland between 2014 and 2023, a stage in which he won three national titles. Precisely, the operation of the English club through Mérida is to re -establish the multiprophiety system that established with the Danish club, which came off two years ago in favor of the millionaire Anders Holch Povlsen. Now, Mérida will occupy that position: “We welcome and greatly appreciate the confidence to the new property, with which we are convinced to continue along the path of growth and professionalization of recent years, wishing a stage full of successes,” said the Extremaduran club.
Benham placed as Brentford’s own president to Cliff Crownwhich also becomes the main president of the Extremadura club. The own Crown He has traveled to Mérida to finalize all the details of the operation. In fact, early on Wednesday morning he interviewed -accompanied by Alejandro Pérezcurrent general director of the Emeritense entity- with the mayor of the capital of Extremadura, Antonio Rodríguez Osunato inform him of the operation, since the agreement had been closed the day before in Madrid after several months of negotiations with which he has so far owned the Extremaduran team, Mark Heffernan. And it is that Mérida until now also owned another English leader, based in Los Angeles (where he has a base football academy) and that since 2021 was the maximum shareholder of Mérida Holdings, LLC., Unique property of the Emeritense entity. In addition to working with base football, Heffesnan He was creator of the Insidesoccer website. In its stage at the head of the Ad Mérida, the club has achieved the promotion to the First Federation, a category where it currently occupies-in the group II-the fifth place that entitles him to play the promotion play-off to the Hypermotion League (Second Division).
The Extremaduran Club has reported that the new project will be “continuous” and that the members in the Board of Directors will be the representatives of the English club: the own own Cliff Crown as president and Nity Raj y Phil Whall as counselors. The previous owner of Mérida will continue to be linked to the Extremadura club as a consultant during the next twelve months in “the transition to the new property,” according to the Emeritense club itself.
Why has Brentford fixed in Mérida? The two highest shareholders of both clubs had a common link: both had two specialized companies in the data management system as a fundamental tool in modern football, both at the time of training and the management of the signings itself and even the way of preparing the game systems.
The accounts
Last September, the general director of Mérida, Alejandro Pérez presented as every year the economic balance of the entity and pointed out that the losses in the previous 2023/2024 campaign were 1,490,000 euros, confirming that the first federation is a “very deficit.” Total income was 1,289,000 euros, which meant 15%growth, but the expense rose to 2,839,000 euros, with an expense of 1,450,000 euros. With which, the losses of the year amounted to 1,490,000 euros. In total, Heffesnan made a disbursement of 2,194,000 euros that year to balance the accounts.