Fresh from a tight five of Sky Sports schmoozing, Tom Wagner strode round St Andrew\u2019s for what can only be called a pre-season lap of pre-honour. Fist-bump the mascots, bro-hug the players, acknowledge the adoration with a flickering wave, bodyguard at arm\u2019s length. Two years after buying Birmingham, there\u2019s something vaguely messianic about Wagner, the hedge fund manager somehow cast as neo-Victorian philanthropist, a 56-year-old American accountant as saviour of England\u2019s Second City.<\/p>\n
Pre-match, he emerged on\ufeffto the Fan Park balcony with\ufeff the transcendental benevolence of a royal or rockstar, 1,200 or so lovestruck grown men screaming below. Perhaps only equalled by Wrexham\u2019s A-listers, few moneymen in English football are as popular or visible as Wagner, a natural orator and evangelist for both his club and himself.<\/p>\n
And you quickly understand why. Ahead of Birmingham\u2019s first match back in the Championship, against Ipswich, optimism permeates everywhere at St Andrew\u2019s. For more than a decade, people came more out of duty than desire, but now they queue before the turnstiles open, then take their seats in near-unison 15 minutes before kick-off\ufeff.<\/p>\n
Marvin Ducksch, a rugged striker with 32 Bundesliga goals in three seasons, is unveiled pre-match. Kyogo Furuhashi (\u00a310m) and Jay Stansfield (\u00a315m) torment Ipswich, who steal a point only with a dubious injury-time penalty \u2013 their first shot on target of the game. The sense that something is happening here is unavoidable.<\/p>\n
Last season, Birmingham were the best League One side ever, having spent more on transfers than any League One side ever. Wagner claims that Birmingham have tripled their revenue in the past two years (from \u00a319\ufeff.7m when he took over), the most of any Championship club not receiving parachute payments. Sponsorships have been signed with Nike, Delta Air Lines and sportswear brand Undefeated, while the club boast that average spend per fan per matchday is up 700%. Wagner used his \ufeffnotes to call Built in Birmingham: Brady & The Blues, the documentary released last week, one of \u201cAmazon Prime\u2019s top performing shows\u201d.<\/p>\n
Alongside Birmingham City, Knighthead owns 49% of the Birmingham Phoenix Hundred franchises and have acquired a significant stake in the Birmingham Panthers netball team. In\ufeff April 2024, they bought 48 acres in Bordesley Green, the site of the former Birmingham Wheels track, for \u00a3100m, which was, charitably, a good price. Bordesley Green is among the \ufeffcity\u2019s most deprived areas, with the second-highest share of working-age residents without qualifications of any Birmingham ward.<\/p>\n
I want to make a difference in the lives of people and there are a lot here who could use some uplifting<\/p>\n
Tom Wagner, Birmingham owner<\/p>\n
It is now the site of the proposed Sports Quarter, which Wagner has pledged up to \u00a33bn to develop. According to Knighthead, there will be a 62,000-seat stadium, more than twice the current capacity of St Andrew\u2019s, alongside a 15,000 to 20,000-seat arena \ufeffto be completed by 2031. \ufeffIt could create up to 8,400 jobs and hundreds of millions for the local economy, and of course for Wagner. At 135 acres in total, it would be larger than Manchester\u2019s Etihad Campus\ufeff. They have also secured \ufeffa \u00a32.4bn government investment in West Midlands transport, extending a tram line to reach the Sports Quarter\ufeff.<\/p>\n
For Birmingham, this is all unquestionably positive. Yet Knighthead is effectively treating a major English city as a distressed asset, and perhaps the worst part is that it is right to. Having declared effective bankruptcy in September 2023, Birmingham City Council is attempting to save \u00a3300m in two years, cutting most of that from adult social care, and children and family services. \ufeff At the height of the most recent strikes, 17,000 tonnes of rubbish were piled on the streets, with litter fragments still lining every road and corner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI care more about Birmingham than I do about anything else,\u201d Wagner said on Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to demonstrate that we care about this city and the people who live and work here. What matters is that we make a difference in the lives of a lot of people and, trust me, in the area surrounding this stadium and the new stadium\ufeff, are a lot of people who could really use some uplifting.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has spoken about investment in \u201cone of the most deprived areas in the country\u201d as a \u201cmoral imperative\u201d, as if he is masterminding an ambitious social housing project, not attempting to appoint himself de facto king of Birmingham.<\/p>\n
This is a story of state incompetence as much as the benefits and pitfalls of massive private investment. What does it mean that the government has no choice but to delegate urban planning and social development of major cities to American hedge funds under the auspice of resurrecting rotting football clubs? Given Sheikh Mansour\u2019s long reign and shadow over Manchester, perhaps we\u2019re just grateful this money is freighted with slightly fewer human rights concerns.<\/p>\n
At every stage, Wagner promotes his own generosity and benevolence, happy to discuss the exact figures and details of his vast investment. It helps that he is peddling a fantasy that everyone wants to believe, selling the loose idea that massive investment will somehow transform the lives of locals mired in poverty, rather than force them out through inevitable gentrification, pushing a problem that he has no responsibility to solve further away.<\/p>\n
There is no doubt this is all odd and grim and inevitable. This is how England functions and develops now, how football functions and develops. \u201cThe plan was always about the Sports Quarter,\u201d Wagner told The Times earlier this year. Birmingham City\u2019s renaissance is just a convenient byproduct of Knighthead\u2019s vision to increase shareholder value.<\/p>\n
And yet no one else seems to have much interest or ability in saving Birmingham from itself. As Wagner parades himself round St Andrew\u2019s, there is little doubt that he loves this place, and that it loves him. He believes Birmingham can play in the Premier League next season. On the basis of Friday night, he might well be right. This is, in so many ways, his city now.<\/p>\n
Photograph by Nick Potts\/PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh from a tight five of Sky Sports schmoozing, Tom Wagner strode round St Andrew\u2019s for what can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-331259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115000372423023731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}