Doug Bierton and Matt Dale reminisce about when they were 21-year-old academics at the University of Manchester in England in 2006. They were studying for a degree in business control but, in their own words, they were spending much of their time. his time betting on the video games Championship Manager (the 2001-02 edition) and Pro Evolution Soccer. And then one night, Bierton bought a reproduction of Germany’s 1990 World Cup jersey for a fancy costume party.
Advertising
As a child, he says he would “exhaust himself” watching the highlights of Italia 90, recreating goals in his own backyard. He eventually discovered a German jersey on eBay, as well as a Paul Gascoigne England uniform from the same tournament at a charity shop. Still, the rarity of those pieces was highlighted when she put the blouse from England up for sale and made a profit of £45.
It’s the start of the duo’s business, Classic Football Shirts, which sells original football shirts, ranging from rare vintages to models from the last season. His most prized possessions include the ultimate jersey worn by Diego Maradona in his last match at Barcelona’s Camp Nou in 1984, Thierry Henry’s jersey from the 2006 World Cup final (below), which France lost in consequence to Italy, and Francesco Totti’s Euro 2000 final jersey with which he won the Man of the Match award. He also owns una. de Cristiano Ronaldo’s most prominent shirts, since the 2003 friendly in which he played for Sporting Lisbon against Manchester United and dazzled so much that United got his signature before leaving the Portuguese capital.
The first shirt the company sold was a 1989 Liverpool shirt to a Norwegian customer, but it now has 160 employees, more than a million fans on Instagram and claims to have sold more than six million shirts to fans in a hundred territories over the past 18 years. It has outlets in Manchester and London and is opening a pop-up store in Manhattan this week with plans to open permanent locations in New York and Los Angeles later this year.
The company also has an outside investor for the first time: Classic Football Shirts won £30. 4 million ($38. 5 million) in expansion capital investments from US investment corporation The Chernin Group (TCG), which values the company at nearly £50 million. TCG is led by Peter Chernin, former chairman of News Corporation, who led Twentieth Century Fox when the company produced Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009).
Advertising
We’ve been seeing big U. S. investments in European soccer teams, media rights, and streaming productions for years, but here’s a major fund investing in video game culture. Fifteen percent of vintage soccer blouse sales already come from the U. S. and this investment represents a bet that TCG will spice up the company’s expansion as the U. S. prepares to host this summer’s Copa America, a men’s Club World Cup in 2025, the men’s World Cup in 2026 (with Canada and Mexico) and the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. A joint bid with Mexico to host the Women’s World Cup in 2031 is also underway.
TCG’s spouse, Greg Bettinelli, tells The Athletic that he was first drawn to vintage football shirts after visiting London to attend an Arsenal match.
“I saw the T-shirts,” he says. Most enthusiasts wore them and they were all slightly different: home, away, first, second, third uniform, other years, other players. Whereas often, you go to an NFL or hockey game here and everyone is wearing the same jersey.
“The next day I went to Classic Football Shirts in London. I arrived just as the store was opening and there was a line outside the store. And immediately, as an investor client, I thought, “They’re promoting football shirts. “, and here, on a Saturday morning, there’s a queue outside the door. So, as an investor client, I worked my way up.
“We’ve spent a smart 18 months investing in football clubs, starting in Europe and more in the UK, from Premier League clubs to the National League (the fifth tier of English football). We’ve been to a lot of games. We’ve noticed a lot of things, but we’ve found that it’s very complicated for a structured fund like ours to invest in football clubs. But it was through this that we fell in love with football culture.
For Bierton, whose brother Gary later joined as a co-founder and will remain at the center of the company, it’s all about “pinching himself. “
Dale remembers traveling two or three miles to cash checks instead of paying to catch the bus at first and says, “Our first business plan was when we realized we could live a sustainable life if we sold 10 T-shirts a day. That was the goal. And now we use between 2,000 and 2,500 T-shirts a day.
“At first, we were a little surprised that there wasn’t a stand where you could buy all the old shirts,” adds Doug Bierton. “Matt and I were asked, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’We maximize student loans, overdrafts, and credit cards. We created a space for students and filled it with football shirts. At first it was quite dark. At first we went weeks without having a smart meal. And it wasn’t until we raised enough money to put an ad at the end of FourFourTwo magazine that it started to show. In early 2007, we committed to finding more space for students.
Advertising
A key moment of expansion came in 2010, when they dealt directly with clubs and brands. Dale remembers the “mind-blowing” moment when he walked into AC Milan’s warehouse and saw 20 years of products.
“They kept literally everything, even the underwear,” she adds. “They had all the numbers. So we can simply say that there is Array, for example, R9 (the Brazilian Ronaldo), who wore a 99 when he played for Milan. And David Beckham: Boxer briefs!
For a six-figure price tag, Classic Football Shirts acquired a huge amount of inventory in Milan, to the point that the company had its own warehouse for the first time. Since then, they say, they have worked with “literally every single one of the big clubs in Europe”.
Bierton speaks to The Athletic via Zoom from the company’s “vault” in Manchester, where 6,700 shirts worn in matches are kept in a temperature-controlled garage area.
“It’s like our wine cellar, made up of the most beautiful and rare blouses we’ve ever had,” she says. “They’re basically used garments in matches that we buy. It would be a real pain to sell them, but we still use some of them for media purposes. Last year, we interviewed David Beckham about the tops of his career, adding a blouse he wore to games we have in 1999, when he won the Champions League with Manchester United.
For the first 10 years, the company bought only to sell in order to continue growing. Dale says, “We had to sacrifice the ones we were looking for to keep. And there are some regrets that we sold some t-shirts, but they helped us fund ourselves. We didn’t get any outside investment, so we had to do it.
“We had a Johan Cruyff jersey from when he played for the Washington Diplomats (in the now-defunct North American Soccer League). An Adidas. Very rare. But we didn’t realize how rare some things were at the time because we were just getting started.
Advertising
“There’s one that we sold and controlled to get back: a West Ham Bobby Moore blouse that was gifted to one of West Ham’s scouts and then sold to us. We sold it, and then the user who bought it from us stayed in the same packaging because he had planned to frame it. And then about 3 years ago, he reached out to us to see if we were looking to get it back so he could use it for exhibitions only. We probably wouldn’t resell it. This blouse, but to have something like that in our collection is amazing.
But what price do they put on vintage blouses worn at parties?Bierton says, “It all comes down to a little bit of feeling. There are auction sites to compare. But still, a Diego Maradona blouse sold a few years ago for £7 million. “”Nobody saw it coming. The position in the collectibles market is also booming. So, the way prices are converting now for high-end products is pretty crazy.
GO FURTHER
Lionel Messi’s jerseys sell for $7. 8 million; Michael Jordan still holds the record
And what about T-shirts that were once sold in retail stores?Bierton says: “The shirt that you may have just bought in a store and whose price has gone up to the maximum over the years is the Holland 1988 shirt. A large size, in good condition, would now cost around £1,000.
“But we are also seeing strong increases with some fashion designs: the Nigeria 2018 World Cup shirt (pictured below), or the AS Roma 2019 third shirt, or the Ajax 2020 away shirt. Some t-shirts with artistic and exclusive designs have more value. If they’re by-products and don’t come from a high-level team, they can sell out in a matter of weeks and then the market won’t be able to have enough when they return.
From an investor’s perspective, the price of nostalgia should not be underestimated. Bettinelli says, “Sports collectibles have been around for a long time, from baseball cards to baseball jerseys.
“Sport connects you to the past, the supply and the future. And it’s multigenerational in nature; It tells you a little story about yourself, the same way a concert T-shirt would: it’s a moment in time. So, from an investor’s perspective, we’re attracted to anything that consumers act on with pride or hobby and with their portfolio.
GO FURTHER
The Secret and Unexpected World of Premier League Football Shirts Released
(Top photo: vintage t-shirts)