Sunderland reach deal to sell majority stake in women’s team
Sunderland have reached an agreement to sell a significant majority stake in their women’s team to Bay Collective, the multi-club ownership group backed by Sixth Street, a U. S. private investment firm.
Specifics of the deal have not been disclosed but multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, confirmed to The Athletic Bay Collective will acquire a holding in the region of 80 per cent, pending approval from WSL Football, which oversees the top two divisions of women’s football in England. That 80 per cent figure mirrors reporting from Bloomberg in late March. The Athletic exclusively revealed Bay Collective as a potential buyer at the end of February, and confirmed discussions between the two parties were ongoing even as a period of exclusivity came to an end.
Bay Collective is headed by Kay Cossington, the English FA’s former women’s technical director who was in charge when England won the European Championship in 2022. The deal will make Sunderland the fourth club in the Premier League to sell a stake in their women’s team to outside investors within the past two years, though this deal is missing one important element from the others. At each of Chelsea, Aston Villa and Everton, internal restructures of women’s teams were undertaken before then selling stakes to outside investors.
Those restructures crystallised gains which contributed positively to the men’s teams’ domestic profitability and sustainability (PSR) calculations, most notoriously at Chelsea. There, in June 2024, the internal ‘sale’ of Chelsea Women to a fellow group company generated a £198million (now $262m) paper profit which, in turn, enabled the men’s team to lose an English record £262m last season without breaching PSR. By contrast, no such internal ‘sale’ has taken place on Wearside.
Sunderland Association Football Club Limited, the men’s team entity, will retain a minority stake in Sunderland Association Football Club Women Limited. The new controlling entity of Sunderland Women is expected to be Bay Collective UK Limited, a UK-registered entity which was set up in April 2025 and of which Cossington is the sole current director. The price paid is yet to be made public but a source told The Athletic the deal is expected to represent the most significant transaction relating to a WSL2 team.
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