Raine Group: Salesman to football’s elite

In May Raine handled the biggest football club sale in history when it sold Chelsea to Todd Boehly. Half a year later a Man Utd deal would blow that out of the water.

Raine’s principals include a Broadway producer, a co-founder who once studied Russian literature in the USSR, while a major investor owns Man City. How did these unlikely bedfellows come to dominate football’s biggest M&A deals?

Why it matters: United is a once in a generation transaction and would easily surpass any other sporting, possibly for years to come.

The perspective: In September, Raine’s founder Joe Ravitch suggested the Glazer family’s equity stake in United was worth $2 billion, making United worth at least $10 billion.