Reading Football Club can be yours for 1 pound… but there’s a catch

By Jack Maloney | May 26, 2014

Every sports fan has fantasized about owning their favorite team. The only problem is that 99.9 percent of sports fans have no where near the amount of money necessary to purchase a professional sports team. Even at the cheapest, they go for hundreds of millions of dollars. The Milwaukee Bucks, for example, are one of the least valued professional franchises, and they just went for the cool price of $550 million. Can’t afford that? Yeah I didn’t think so.

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But if you’re still interested in owning a team, Reading Football Club in England is on the market for just 1 pound.

Only, there’s a catch. Come on, you had to know there was a catch. It turns out you’ll also be on the hook for the 38 million pound debt.

From Pro Soccer Talk, via the Reading Chronicle

"Reading, recently relegated from the Premier League, is now up for sale for the low price of one pound.The catch: you also have to take on the club’s £38 million ($64 million) in debt.According to The Reading Chronicle, Reading majority owner Anton Zingarevich has put his 51% stake in the club up for sale, hoping to offload the club onto some other billionaire."

Hey! $64 million is a lot less than $550 million. All you need is a couple thousand friends and you can probably scrounge up the funds.

Reading, a staple of the Championship (equivalent to AAA in baseball), made the jump to the Premier League a few years ago, but only lasted one season before being relegated again. This year they finished in seventh place in the Championship meaning they’ll have to wait another year to attempt to return to the promised land that is the Premier League.