Tether Launch $1.3bn Juventus Bid

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The story of the year for many at the intersection of these two industries rumbles on.

The most profitable company on the planet, the stablecoin issuer Tether, want to buy Juventus Football Club, Italy’s most storied and valuable football club.

The original creators and owners of FIAT, the car brand, are now having their resolve tested for Italy’s most precious footballing asset by the folks who have put fiat currency on the blockchain.

Before I delve into what feels like the crescendo moment for this game of cat and mouse, here’s a quick primer to bring you up to speed.

For the uninitiated, Tether are the most profitable company on the planet per employee, with net profits of over $13bn in 2024.

They are behind USDT, the largest stablecoin in the cryptocurrency market, with a market capitalisation exceeding $150 billion. Stablecoins have become the first example of product-market fit in crypto, with the supply of them recently reaching ~$250billion, up from ~$140 billion year-on-year.

Their attempted acquisition of Juventus dates back to March 2025, and has continued throughout the year.

• March 2025: Tether reportedly acquired more than 5% of Juventus, with regulator Consob being notified after they crossed the 5% regulatory threshold of Juventus’ voting rights.

• The Agnelli family's holding company Exor, which controls 64% of Juventus (and also owns Ferrari), has not sold any shares to Tether, and have consistently denied any plans to sell the club.

• Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino described the move as a "strategic investment" that will help Tether become a "pioneer in merging new technologies, such as digital assets, AI, and biotech, with the well-established sports industry to drive change globally”.

• April 2025: Tether acquired additional shares in Juventus Football Club, bringing its total participation to over 10.12 % of the issued share capital, representing 6.18% of voting rights. In the same announcement, it was clarified that the initial share acquisition was worth 8.2% rather than the ~5% initially reported.

• June 2025: Tether start using the press to pressure Exor to give them a board seat. They now have a 10.7% stake in Juventus.

Tether’s Acquisition Bid 📊 

And now, Tether have officially made their move. And it was rejected immediately.

The stablecoin issuer submitted a binding, all-cash proposal to acquire Exor’s controlling stake in Juventus FC.

The offer, priced at €2.66 per share, valued the Italian giants at approximately €1.1 billion ($1.3bn). This represents a 21% premium on the closing share price of €2.19 before the announcement. Additionally, Tether pledged a further €1 billion in direct investment for club development.

However, the door was slammed shut. Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family, rejected the bid within 24 hours. Exor CEO John Elkann’s statement was unequivocal: "Juventus, our history and our values are not for sale."

Elkann is the great-great-grandson of Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli, showing just how steeped the Juventus brand is within the family’s lineage.

Juventus as a club posted a €199m net loss for the 2023/24 season. 2024/25 is projected to be a stronger showing with losses narrowing to ~€40-50m, but the club has not turned a net profit since 2017. Of course, this is not unusual for a football club.

Indeed, revenues since 2020 also show that Juventus are slowing, and their controllable revenues (Matchday and Commercials) are ~ parity with 2020.

This is a stark difference to AC Milan and Internazionale, two other Italian football juggernauts, who have both seen huge growth since 2020 in controllable revenues.

Of Deloitte’s money league, only Chelsea and Barcelona have not seen growth in revenues since 2020, showing that Juventus are amongst the outliers in Europe’s elite when it comes to financial health. Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino's well-documented affection for Juventus, combined with the club's financial challenges, presents both a personal passion play and a strategic opportunity.

Compared to the backdrop of recent acquisitions in elite football:

• Atletico Madrid: Apollo Asset Management’s recent investment in Q4 2025 valued the club at $2.6bn

• Manchester United: Jim Ratcliffe’s minority investment in 2024 valued the club at around $6.5 billion 

• Chelsea: Sold to the Boehly-Clearlake consortium for $5.3bn in 2022

• AC Milan: Sold to RedBird Capital for $1.3bn in 2022

The $1.3bn number for Juventus seems reasonable in this context.

The Strategic View 🌱 

It’s simple to view this as a conquest of the heart and not one of any strategic intent. But there are several things at play here that, emotion aside, could make this a smart move for Tether.

Firstly Tether are a brand.

The USDT stablecoin is often referred to as Tether.

Consumers do not call ‘USDC’, Circle’s issued stablecoin, ‘Circle’.

So there is an incentive for Tether to generate brand awareness.

It’s advantageous for them to do so because there are constant question marks about their legitimacy. Although most of those doubts have been muted in the last 2 years, it is a company and brand that still craves legitimacy.

The historical controversy has stemmed from questions surrounding their reserves: “Is every USDT stablecoin actually backed by a dollar or dollar equivalent?”

Tether has recently adopted more transparent reporting practices. Their most recent transparency report from December 2025 reveals that the bulk of their $143+ billion in reserves are in U.S. Treasury bills.

Yet, in November 2025 - the S&P global credit ratings downgraded Tether’s rank from “constrained” to “weak”, its lowest level, reflecting “the rise in exposure to high-risk assets in (its) reserves over the past year and persistent gaps in disclosure”.

In very ‘Tether’ fashion, CEO Ardoino said they wear the “loathing with pride”.

And although it’s virtually impossible to ascertain the true health and risk of Tether, Luca Prosperi, CEO of M0 and former banker, analysed this in depth.

To summarise his excellent piece:

• Tether operates like an unregulated bank

• Their capital ratio is ~ 10.7%, below the 14-15% most major banks maintain post-2008

And in the midst of this, Tether has diversified its assets, looking to grow beyond reliance on interest-rate revenue. Indeed, their strategy looks like something you would see from the Agnelli family if they started their path to riches in the 2020s.

Mining companies, Agricultural companies, gold, video streaming platform Rumble, and humanoid robotics — Tether is flexing its financial muscle. You could argue that they are simply doing what Exor did 100 years ago, when they used profits from Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili Torino (Fiat), to diversify their own assets.

Exor say no 👋 

On the face of it, the Agnelli family’s answer is straightforward and steadfast.

They will not sell.

To take from two excellent pieces 1) James Horncastle at the Athletic and 2) Carlo De Marchis from LinkedIn 

The club has been in the family’s stewardship for 100 years and in Italy, the custodianship of a football club is not just seen as an asset.

As per De Marchis:

“Juventus has been under Agnelli ownership since 1923. The club is not only a sports enterprise; it is a social symbol woven into the identity of a family, a company, and a city. In countries where club ownership shifts between oligarchs, sovereign funds or private-equity vehicles, it may seem unusual to decline a cash-heavy premium offer. In Italy, it makes sense. The club is part of the family brand. Selling it would be closer to selling a surname.”

And Honrcastle backs up this point saying that “No club in world football are more defined by, or associated with, their owners than Juventus. The Agnellis have been their benefactors for more than a century.”

And yet, this doesn’t feel like it will go away soon.

In previous analysis of this story, I've provided context—some explicit, some requiring interpretation. When you place that alongside recent developments, it makes for interesting reading:

1. Exor, the Agnelli Family HoldCo, recently sold $3.2 billion worth of their Ferrari stake for M&A purposes, but remains the automotive brand’s largest shareholder and controls the largest voting block. The timing is fascinating. It’s touted as M&A money, so it will be interesting to see what it is spent on. But if Ferrari isn’t off the table, why is Juventus not?

2. Exor have stripped other assets. Subsidiaries of their car business, such as Magneti Marelli (auto parts company) and Iveco (bus and truck maker) were sold lately.

3. Three years ago, Exor delisted from the Milan stock exchange and relocated to the Dutch city of Amsterdam. As per Horncastle, this “created an impression of the Agnelli family withdrawing from Italy”

4. Just last week, Exor-owned Gedi, a media business which owns assets such as ‘La Repubblica, is being stripped and sold to Greek group Antenna

5. Tether are extremely savvy operators. They already have a board seat at Juventus. They will continue to push, and the dam may well break for Exor. Especially if they see weakness (selling a stake in Ferrari as an example).

Against the backdrop of:

1. Juventus’ most unsuccessful period on the pitch since the 70s

2. Exor financially supporting the club from their own pockets to cover losses since Covid

3. Tether’s unlimited war chest and emotional attachment to the club

This won’t go away any time soon.

Concluding Thoughts 💬 

1) No Surprises

In my 2025 predictions, my most speculative prediction, but one that I had a hunch on, was Crypto[dot]com buying a sports team.

This was on the back of Tether buying a $750m stake in Rumble. It wasn’t Crypto[dot]com but Tether that made the first move here. I predicted the crypto exchange because of their near-obsessive sports sponsorship strategy.

2) This is the year crypto companies stop being ‘just’ crypto companies.

Some of these businesses are just too big, too profitable and have too much opportunity not to spread their wings.

Tether made $13b in profit (!!!!) in 2024.

Sovereign and huge private equity is the only wealth that can beat that.

3) Interest rates might not be this high forever

Tether’s main moneymaker is interest rates being high, and arbitrating that against USDT issuance.

If interest rates go down, they will make less money.

Diversifying from a point of strength (billions in yearly profit) is smart.

4) Is this strategic or just PR?

Tether talk about the potential to utilise crypto to reach a global, untapped and undermonetised audience that Juventus have.

Using stablecoins to do this isn’t far away.

Especially if the global south is increasingly adopting this digital dollar.

If Juventus were able to add stablecoins as a payment method to their plumbing over the next couple of seasons, I wonder how much that would unlock for them? My guess is ‘not much right now’. So strategically, for Juventus FC, I’m unsure if this is huge in the short term, even if Tether had majority ownership.

This is, however, smart from an optics perspective as they diversify their investment strategy outside of crypto. It’s also ~ the same price to buy 10% of Juventus as it is to be Manchester City’s front of jersey sponsor for 3-4 seasons.

If you’re flush with cash and don’t need to pay something over 3-4 years, what has a better impact?

You could view this as an incredibly smart sponsorship deal without any of the marketing collateral, even if they don’t end up getting majority ownership.

5) Will Exor End up Selling?

If you had asked me in early 2025, I would have placed a low probability on this transaction happening.

But every piece of evidence since has pointed to the probability of that increasing.

Exor are clearly in a position of restructuring their assets. And if it were not for their emotional and familial ties to the football club, there is no doubt this would have been on the table a long time ago.

Every story has an ending, however. And football ownership has changed dramatically over the last 15 years, and Juventus are now an outlier. Add that to their lack of commercial growth in the last 5 years, and it points to requiring a change in strategy and increased investment. Do Exor have the energy, or capital, to go again here? Or is a sale the easier way out?

Many football fans will say “not to a crypto company” — but stewardship being by Turin-based businessmen rather than a ruthless american private equity firm is surely the better outcome?

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