Auckland FC owner Bill Foley. Photo / Getty Images
Bill Foley is confident of success with Auckland FC – but he is going to be patient.
That adjective doesn’t always fit naturally with billionaire American owners of sports teams. Consider the patterns in the English Premier League, with the hot-button antics of Todd Boehly at Chelsea and the Glazer family at Manchester United, known for their “hire, fire, any given desire” style, or even some NFL mavericks.
That’s not Foley, he assures, he is more about careful construction. Of course, he wants to be top of the heap – he craves an A League title – and he told the Herald last November that he hoped a champion team could be built “within three seasons”, but he will bide his time.
“I’m a patient owner,” Foley told the Weekend Herald. “We will be patient this year. We have a really good group of people, from the football side to the commercial side. I know we have a good coach, an excellent director of football operations and I know how well [chief executive] Nick [Becker] has done for us. I don’t think you are going to see many changes this year, unless something disastrous happens, then you always have to be flexible.”
Foley won’t be drawn on precise predictions. It’s been a sprint to build the new club and the squad will take a while to find cohesion, especially with the late arrivals of the visa players. On paper, Auckland have a superior roster to the likes of Newcastle, Brisbane, Perth and Macarthur, but whether they can match it with the big Sydney and Melbourne clubs, along with two-time defending champions Central Coast Mariners and the Wellington Phoenix, is the burning question.
“We are going to be a very competitive team,” says Foley. “We will win a number of games; we would like to start on Saturday. We’ve got some really good players [and] we are pretty happy with what Steve [Corica, coach] and Terry [McFlynn, director] have recruited. I don’t want to make a prediction but I believe we [will] win a lot more games than people give us credit for. We’ll do very well.”
Foley draws parallels with his NHL experience, where his Las Vegas expansion team the Golden Knights were widely tipped to come last in their inaugural season and instead made the Stanley Cup finals.
“I have very high expectations from what this team can do,” says Foley.
Foley is famously hands-on with his ice hockey team, saying, “I have lunch with the boys every day I am in town, I know them, I know their wives, I go to every game.” This won’t be possible with Auckland FC, though he promises to be “very involved”.
He arrived on Thursday for a fleeting visit, his first time here since last November. But there are weekly calls with chief executive Nick Becker and football director McFlynn, and with Zoom chats with other owners, including Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams. He had dinner scheduled with Corica on Friday, their first face-to-face meeting.
Becker says Foley has a “macro/micro approach”: “He macro-manages when things are going good and he micro-manages if things are not so good”. Foley likes to delegate and step back but there are no illusions about who is in charge, as shown on his previous trip to Auckland. In addition to the launch of Auckland FC, the 79-year-old also had a summit with senior personnel from his wineries around the country “just to make sure we are selling enough New Zealand wine in America, which I don’t feel we have been”, before they committed to a much bigger target.
Foley is affable and charming but also ruthless, as you would need to be when amassing a personal fortune of US$1.8 billion ($2b), which puts him inside the top 2000 wealthiest individuals on the planet. However, Auckland FC won’t be a revenue raid. He expects to wear losses of around $5 million this season and next, not helped by a recent 75% decrease in the A League dividend.
“We don’t need to make a lot of money, frankly but if we can get around break-even, then I am pretty happy because that allows us to keep on investing in players and facilities and so on,” says Foley. “We are not a sovereign wealth fund, we are not a financial sponsor, we need to be intelligent with the way we spend our money. Just to do what some of the American owners have done in the Premier League, that is not my style. I like a lean, structured environment and having really good people around me that I can delegate [to] and they can make the decisions.”
But Foley has made quite a splash in the football world. Since buying Bournemouth in December 2022 he has also invested in FC Lorient (France), Hibernian (Scotland), then Auckland. There’s an impending stake in a Portuguese first division club (”we are almost there”), a key component in the multi-club strategy, as Portugal is a major entry point for young Brazilian footballers, given the favourable immigration requirements and shared language. Being part of Foley’s football empire should be an attractive proposition for aspiring Auckland players.
“The idea is to give our players from New Zealand access to other teams that they can move on towards and be part of, and then keep on moving through our system,” says Foley. The Portuguese team will be the final piece of his football pyramid “unless something really compelling comes along”. He also won’t be investing in any other sporting franchises here, content with his wine portfolio, lodge and restaurants.
Foley didn’t want to elaborate on reported plans for a stadium at Western Springs. That initiative is being led by co-owners Mowbray and Williams, and chief executive Nick Becker said it was within a council process.
Over the years, we haven’t had many figures like Foley in New Zealand sport. He’s charismatic, can court controversy – with the recent admission that he has again donated to Donald Trump, after previously labelling the former US President a “narcissistic egomaniac” – and seriously rich, with only three or four New Zealanders ahead of him in the wealth stakes. If Auckland FC does take off, Foley’s profile locally is sure to rise, not that he will be hunting attention.
“I’m a pretty private guy,” says Foley. “I like talking to the press, I like being transparent and being open but I am not going to be out in front on the football side. And I am a long way away. I will probably come down to New Zealand twice a year, try to catch some games and I like to spend time at our lodge, and the wine business is fun and the restaurants are fun. I’m in the fun stage of my life, not the stressful stage.
“New Zealand has always been special for me, it’s such a beautiful country and people are down-to-earth. I love the people, they are fantastic. It’s not everywhere an American can go and actually be welcomed - sometimes Americans aren’t that popular. It’s not glitzy [here], it’s just really basic. I’m a farmer in America, you know, we grow grapes and so I’m basically a farmer.”
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns.