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The Chernin Group has invested $38.5 million in Classic Football Shirts, a United Kingdom company that sells authentic soccer jerseys from throughout the world.
Greg Bettinelli, a Chernin partner, said the private equity company’s investment is “significant,” but he declined to say how large of a stake it acquired. Doug Bierton and Matthew Dale, who co-founded Classic Football Shirts as college students in 2006, will continue running the business.
Chernin plans on helping Classic Football Shirts expand its presence, particularly in the U.S., which is its second-largest market and accounts for about 15% of its revenue even though it has no permanent brick and mortar retail presence in the country. The company last year had pop-up stores in Los Angeles, Miami and New York.
On Thursday, it is opening another store for four months in New York, where it plans on opening a permanent retail store in the next six to 12 months as the U.S. gears up to host the 2026 World Cup. Classic Football Shirts has two permanent stores in the U.K., but it generates most of its revenue via online sales.
Classic Football Shirts generated more than $23.7 million of revenue and earned an operating profit of more than $2.5 million for the 12 months through June 30, 2022, according to its latest filing with the U.K. government. The company claims it has been profitable since its founding and has had no outside investors until recently striking a deal with the Chernin Group.
“We’ve just plowed back in all the profits that we’ve made into building the ultimate destination to find an old football shirt,” said Bierton, the company’s CEO. “It’s been a great journey. As it’s grown over the years, and particularly recently, it just feels like there’s just so many opportunities in this market. We really wanted to get some kind of expertise and a partner to help us achieve the full potential of it, and particularly in the U.S. as we build to the 2026 World Cup. There’s so many opportunities. When we met Greg and TCG, it just felt like the perfect partner to help us achieve what we wanted to achieve in the future.”
Bettinelli said Chernin has for several months been interested in expanding into soccer, a sport it had not previously invested in. The company considered buying stakes in teams in the U.S. and U.K., but that never came to fruition. On a trip to the U.K., Bettinelli noticed the long lines in front of the Classic Football Shirts store. He later delved into the company and the industry.
“TCG’s view is the culture of (soccer) is unlike anything else in sports,” Bettinelli said. “It transcends sports even. It’s a very special category that I think we as Americans haven’t fully understood yet, but you really see it in Europe and in other parts of the world where (soccer) is life, for lack of a better term, and the culture really drives a lot of commercial opportunities.”
He added: “This is really the market leader in a super fast-paced, interesting market. The business is growing very fast relative to peers…I think this is an opportunity to kind of take that to the next level.”
Bierton and Dale started Classic Football Shirts as 21-year-old students at the University of Manchester in England. They were major soccer fans, but they noticed there was no easy way to buy jerseys online even though the demand was strong.
“We had this dream that if we could sell 10 shirts a day, it would be a great business,” Bierton said.
Bierton and Dale launched the Classic Football Shirts website in August 2006 and bought advertisements in soccer magazines to promote the company. They acquired and sold hundreds of shirts over the next few years. In 2010, they struck a deal with famed Italian club AC Milan to buy its entire inventory of more than 30,000 shirts over the previous 20 years. Since then, they have formed partnerships with major brands and clubs to buy jerseys. Each year, teams have multiple jerseys and designs, so the supply of new gear expands, as does fans’ interest in buying the shirts.
Classic Football Shirts has customers in more than 100 countries, as well as more than 1 million followers on Instagram and more than 505,000 followers on X.
“Compared to other sports, there’s a lot more creativity within football shirts because there’s a lot more freedom,” said Dale, the company’s chief commercial officer. “The leagues aren’t necessarily controlled by one brand that has the license to all the teams. There’s lots of competition, there’s lots of crossover into street wear. You’re seeing that now in terms of limited drops and really crazy designs that can be worn on the pitch…You see the likes of the highest fashion labels releasing football shirts. There’s a reason for people doing that. They are seeing that trend towards being an everyday product for someone to wear.”
The Chernin Group invested in Classic Football Shirts through its third fund, which raised $1.3 billion in 2022. The company has invested in several sports-related companies over the past decade, including Barstool Sports, Collectors, Goldin Auctions, the Premier Lacrosse League and Unrivaled Sports.
Asked if Classic Football Shirts could expand into other sports, Bettinelli said “longer-term, for sure. I think near term, there’s tremendous opportunity of expanding what Classic Football Shirts does best into North America, especially with what’s happening in and around international (soccer) and the audience in the United States.”
He noted that streaming services and media companies such as ESPN, CBS and NBC in recent years have acquired rights to global soccer leagues and aired those games to U.S. consumers. In addition, the U.S. is hosting the Copa America tournament this summer, the FIFA Club World Cup next summer, the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in 2028.
“Soccer in the United States is going to go through something that we’re super excited about, so I don’t want to lose too much focus,” Bettinelli said. “Sports memorabilia in shirts, whether it’s NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, even things like concert T-shirts, or thematic Comic-Con shirts or Star Wars, there’s all sorts of things you can do from that. But right now the business is Classic Football Shirts, and I think that’s really focused.”
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