A group led by American businessman David Storch has been named as the preferred bidder for Sheffield Wednesday, who will start the 2026-27 season in League One with a 15-point deduction.
Coming two weeks after a rival bid to buy the crisis-hit Championship club collapsed, the winning bid is not high enough to ensure that all of the club’s unsecured creditors receive at least 25 per cent of what they are owed, hence the points deduction.
The Storch group’s bid of just under £20million beat rival offers for the south Yorkshire-based club from English retail tycoon and ex-Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, a group led by former Charlton Athletic and Sunderland executive Charlie Methven and two undisclosed U.S. syndicates.
“We are thrilled and excited to take this important step toward stewardship of this historic football club,” Storch said. “As we continue through this process, we are looking forward to working with the local community, engaging transparently with fans and embarking together on this journey to restore Sheffield Wednesday to its rightful place.
“We are absolutely committed to delivering a brighter future for our fans and bringing joy back to Hillsborough.”
The four-time English champions have been in administration since October 24, when their former owner Dejphon Chansiri put insolvency firm Begbies Traynor in charge, a move that added an automatic 12-point deduction to the six-point penalty they had already received for late payments.
Losing 18 points would badly handicap even the best teams but Wednesday have been dreadful this season, winning just one league game. Bottom of the table on minus six points, they became the first team in English Football League history to be relegated before the end of February when they they lost to fierce rivals Sheffield United last month.
Wednesday were relegated after a loss to their city rivals Sheffield United in February (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)
On Christmas Eve, the joint administrators announced that a consortium led by Dunfermline Athletic owner James Bord was their preferred bidder, with the former professional poker player’s group paying a non-refundable deposit of £3.2m to secure a period of exclusivity while his group waited for approval from the EFL.
But nine weeks later, on February 25, Bord’s group dramatically withdrew, saying they no longer believed Wednesday were worth the £47m they had bid for the club in December. This reopened the process, letting the Ashley, the Storch family and others back in.
Storch, 73, retired as chief executive of aircraft maintenance firm AAR Corp in 2018, before spending another five years as the chairman of the multinational’s board of directors. He is now managing partner of Illinois-based investment firm Arise Capital Partners, where his son Michael is a managing director.
They have been looking to invest in British football for over two years, having previously looked at Blackpool, Cardiff City, Plymouth Argyle and Reading. They and their co-investor Tom Costin, the managing partner of investment firm Owl Ventures, were outbid by Bord’s group in December but have waited in the wings to see if they would get a second chance.
Storch and Costin attended Tuesday night’s 1-1 draw with Watford.
Sheffield Wednesday Football Club – Update on Sale Process.
🔗 https://t.co/1yjGJ8zaov pic.twitter.com/GpHXz90swI
— Sheffield Wednesday (@swfc) March 10, 2026
Once Bord’s group withdrew, the administrators said they would run an expedited sales process by going back to all those who had expressed serious interest last year, although new parties were also invited to make bids.
An initial deadline of last Friday produced bids from the Storch group, former Newcastle United owner Ashley and Methvin’s investors. Four other groups contacted the administrators over the weekend, with two of those making formal bids over the weekend.
The Storch bid was the highest, which ordinarily would be enough to win the day, as the administrators’ primary responsibility is to return as much value as possible to those owed money by the club, with Chansiri being by far the largest creditor. He is owed more than £62m, which means any bidder who wants to avoid a further 15-point penalty must pay him £15.5m.
That, however, is what most observers believe the entire club is worth, and anyone who wants to take control of Wednesday as a going concern must pay £12m to satisfy the club’s football-related debts, unpaid taxes and a loan secured on the company which owns the club’s Hillsborough stadium. There is also the small matter of the £4m bill run up by Begbies Traynor and its law firm Wiggin.
The upshot of all this is that the minimum price for Wednesday was about £16m, with at least twice that needed to avoid a points penalty next season. Having seen Bord’s group fail to close the deal, it seems that all parties have decided to use their cash to get the club moving in the right direction again next season, as opposed to giving Chansiri any money.
Fans, however, will be greatly concerned about the prospect of a second straight relegation. The average points total needed for survival in League One over the last five season is just over 45 points. That means Wednesday would effectively need a mid-table season to survive.
Leeds United found themselves in this position when they were relegated in similar circumstances in 2007. They won their first seven games to quickly erase the deficit but lost 1-0 to Doncaster Rovers in the play-off final at Wembley. They would have gone up in second place without the 15-point penalty. It then took Leeds two more attempts to get out of League One in 2010.
Wednesday’s administrators still need to make sure there is a next season for the club, as the money will run out this summer. And given the two months already wasted on Bord’s group, which had made little progress in terms of regulatory clearance, they have had to consider whether their next choice will receive speedy EFL approval. A further consideration has been the handover of the Owners’ and Directors’ Test process to the Independent Football Regulator (IFR) in May.
This had led to some speculation that Ashley had the best chance, as he has already owned an English team and has an estimated personal fortune of more than £3billion. The 61-year-old, however, has a track record of never being the biggest bidder for any company he is chasing: he prefers to be the last bidder still standing.
It is now up to the Storch group to convince the EFL, with the IFR watching closely, that it has the funds to rescue Wednesday. Storch will also need to answer questions about a $55million settlement AAR Corp paid in 2024 to settle investigations by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
These investigations arose when the executive of an AAR subsidiary pleaded guilty to bribing government officials in Nepal, while an agent working for AAR pleaded guilty to bribing South African government officials. The offences took place between 2015 and 2020, and AAR made profits of almost $24m from the contracts.
However, Storch is confident that this matter will not cause any problems with the EFL or IFR.
In a statement, his lawyer Keir Gordon told The Athletic: “Mr. Storch was chairman of AAR Corp when the company self-reported a potential wrongdoing by a rogue employee in 2019. The company cooperated with authorities and successfully resolved the matter in 2024.
“The U.S. government was satisfied with the outcome and determined not to prosecute AAR Corp. We are satisfied that this is not an issue in relation to the EFL’s OADT process but ultimately, as you are aware, it is for the EFL to determine this.”
Neither David nor Michael Storch has any previous experience of owning a sports team, although David is on the board of V1 Sports, a golf-training software company that is part of Arise Capital’s portfolio. Costin, on the other hand, is an investor in the Blue Crow Sports Group that owns majority stakes in Mexico’s Cancun FC, Spanish side CD Leganes and Le Havre in France.
