In conversation with iSportConnect, Xander Czaikowski, CEO and Co-founder of Estrella Football Group, joined Dominic Quantrill of The Quantrill Partnership – an executive search and brand partnerships firm working across sport, media and entertainment to discuss how Estrella, the Netherlands-based multi-club group behind Cascais, Carvoeiro United and Aurora Pro Patria 1919 is building a different kind of multi-club model.

Czaikowski spent two decades in Dutch media producing sports content for John de Mol before taking over a relegated PEC Zwolle in 2022. In almost three years he grew revenue from €10m to €18m, turned a projected €4.5m loss into two years of around €1m profit, and generated almost €20m in transfer proceeds to help fund a new elite training facility. The club also won promotion at the first attempt, and he later wrote up the process as a playbook.

He is now running that playbook at scale: with a horizontal multi-club network, five acquisitions a year, building towards twenty-five. Underneath it sits Club OS, a shared technology platform that pools scouting, performance and fan data from every club in the network.

A network of equals

City Football Group and Red Bull built vertical structures — a flagship club at the top, satellites feeding players and value upwards. Czaikowski is building the opposite; “It’s a horizontal model; each and every football club that joins the network is just as important.” Each club keeps its badge, identity and local management. What the group supplies sits behind the scenes; global partnerships with Fever for ticketing and Catapult for performance gear, and the technology stack.

Buying in without buying control

“Most MCOs buy the majority because they want to have control of the club”, says Czaikowski. “But they forget they’re also responsible for the majority of the debt. We buy a significant minority.” The group underwrites roughly €500,000 a year of operating losses for three years as growth capital – €1.5m in total — for typically 25-35% of the shares, with an option to move to majority in year three at a discount. It will not buy out a shareholder who simply wants to leave, and because the equity is fixed against the forecast, every euro of revenue it adds is a euro it need not put in.

It starts with attractive football

“There are a lot of similarities between what I did in the media industry and the football industry, because football is also entertainment,” says Czaikowski. “Football has to be offensive and attractive, otherwise there will be no fans and ultimately also no sponsors. Attractive football drives the media value for the sponsors. So ultimately it will drive the revenue of the club.” At PEC Zwolle that logic drove the first hire — an attacking coach, to bring goals, attention and people through the turnstiles. Clubs joining the network routinely ask for promotion to be written in as a target, but Czaikowski refuses. “Promotion is the proof that we did everything else right.” The measurable objectives are player development and growth in ticketing, hospitality and merchandise revenue. And it starts with changing the vision.

Fallen angels, not trophy assets

Their acquisition screen is a 35-criteria tool that scrapes public information on roughly 3,000 European clubs, rating brand name, stadium ownership, catchment area and proximity to a major city. Czaikowski says: “We’re looking for Fallen Angels that play now in the third, fourth or fifth division, but used to play in the highest division. So, they have the ability to go up because they’ve been there.” A Championship club absorbs the entire fund; €2m spread across four or five lower-league sides diversifies the risk. Clubs include CS Cascais, FC Carvoeiro United and Aurora Pro Patria 1919. Discussions also took place with Greenock Morton FC, Aubagne Air Bel, Vendsyssel FF, but these clubs didn’t pass the stress test.

Working at scale 

It’s the scale which makes it more than a database. Wyscout and its rivals cover the professional tiers; nobody systematically watches the third, fourth and fifth divisions, which is precisely where underpriced players sit. “If we have 25 clubs all over Europe and they all use five scouts watching 10 games, we are watching 65,000 matches a year throughout the whole of Europe in the lower leagues,” says Czaikowski. Elite clubs and federations — the German FA among them — pay for the same technology as customers, and that revenue funds the platform the network’s clubs receive free.

The asset underneath 

ClubOS brings every department of a club onto one system, on and off the pitch, and connects them all creating a single source of truth that enables decision makers. “At most clubs, the scouts, the coaches and the commercial team all have their own information and they don’t talk to each other,” says Czaikowski. “ClubOS puts everyone on the same page, so every decision, on or off the pitch, is made with the full picture.

The parts you cannot automate

For all the technology, there’s a critical human element, in building relationships and recruiting the right people. “In football now, a lot of those businesses have been invested in by people who understand consumer behaviour, fans, audiences, whether it be film, music or entertainment,” says Czaikowski. “Increasingly, when we’re asked to help find people, people are not looking for more football expertise. They’re looking for technology expertise, or experience about how they can deliver a wider piece of data.”