Chicago Bears minority owners buy shares of Premier League team

The Chicago Bears are still not a good football team, but business among some of its investors has picked up.

Ryan Sports Ventures, the sports ownership arm of the Chicago-based Ryan family, purchased a minority stake in Premier League team AFC Bournemouth. The side is already American owned as Bill Foley, the owner of the Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, purchased the team from Max Demin last December. 

As noted by Matt Slater of The Athletic, the addition of the Ryan family brings together two major players in American insurance - Foley owns Fidelity National Insurance, a property insurance firm while Pat Ryan founded the worldwide firm Aon.

In a statement posted in Slater's article, Ryan Sports managing partner Rob Ryan said that this was an opportunity to align with an already successful owner in the sports world:

“In investing in Black Knight Football, we are joining like-minded ownership in Bill Foley, who has demonstrated an extremely high level of sustained success in business and sports. We also intentionally built the team at Ryan Sports to include not only sophisticated investors but seasoned operators that could actively help grow each of our investments through our experience and collective networks."

Bournemouth is far from a top-level club in English soccer, having only been promoted to the Premier League for the first time in 2015 before being relegated five years later. The club was promoted to the Premier League again in 2022 and has lived at the bottom of the standings since. 

The Premier League has taken on more American ownership over the years, much to the chagrin of many Britons, including those who root for Manchester United. Ten sides now have a United States-based owner, and there are certainly concerns that they may bring an NFL-styled structure to the way clubs are managed.

As for the Bears themselves, the team has had a tumultuous time as of late between the resignation of Alan Williams as defensive coordinator, a bizarre rumor of some sort of raid, and on-field play that led to quite the embarrassing review from one of its most prominent beat reporters. 

If there's good news to be had for Chicago's team, there seems to be some political progress with the team's plans to build a new stadium in Arlington Park to replace Soldier Field.