Impact of Law 39/2023 on Foreign Investment in SADs

In recent years, foreign investment in the SADs of Portuguese football clubs has become notorious. Proof of this is the fact that 11 of the 18 clubs competing in the Primeira Liga in the 2025/2026 season have foreign capital in their respective sports companies.

Given this scenario, it is important to ask: has the new legal regime for sports companies, enshrined in Law 39/2023 of 4 August (the "SAD Legal Regime"), put a stop to this trend or, on the contrary, has it merely confirmed that we are facing a structural and irreversible phenomenon in Portuguese football?

The main aim of enacting the new SAD Legal Framework was to reverse the unsustainable course that the sector had been on. After all, according to government data, around 20 per cent of the sports companies that had been set up were showing signs of unviability, many of which had culminated in insolvency and dissolution.

The new law thus sought to counteract this trend by strengthening the regulatory framework, namely by reconfiguring the founding club's shareholding in the sports company, consolidating the suitability criteria and incompatibilities, creating gender quotas, increasing information duties, etc.

At first glance, the new measures could be perceived as an obstacle to the entry of foreign capital. However, the greater stability and transparency in the structure and operation of sports companies will strengthen investor confidence in them, ultimately helping to boost investment.

At the same time, the new regime ensures more effective protection of the interests of the founding clubs, guaranteeing that opening up to foreign capital does not jeopardise the clubs' sporting and institutional identity.

In this regard, several Portuguese clubs, faced with critical financial situations, were forced to resort to foreign investment as a way of guaranteeing their survival. As a result of this financial vulnerability, clubs lost negotiating leeway and ended up accepting unfavourable conditions without adequately safeguarding their institutional and sporting interests. An example of this is the case of Clube Desportivo das Aves, which went into insolvency a few years after the SAD was sold.

It was precisely with the aim of mitigating these risks that the new SAD Legal Framework imposed a set of cumulative requirements aimed at ensuring the suitability of the holders of shareholdings (see article 32, no. 5). At the same time, the system of incompatibilities has also been strengthened, including, among other restrictions, the fact that athletes' agents, or holders of stakes in companies linked to sports betting, are not allowed to be qualified shareholders, directors or managers of sports companies (see article 21). To the same extent, transparency requirements were tightened up, particularly in terms of disclosing shareholdings, voting rights and identifying beneficial owners (see article 22).

Article 52 of the SAD Legal Framework states that the law itself will be evaluated three years after it comes into force, in other words, in September 2026. Now that we're more than halfway through the process, we can see that the recent legislative review has had positive effects, above all due to the greater protection given to founding clubs, without jeopardising the attractiveness of new international investors.

In fact, consider the cases of Rio Ave and Alverca, with the entry of investors from Greece and Brazil, respectively. An even more recent case was Moreirense, where an American consortium took a majority stake in the SAD.

There is no doubt that the new legal regime for SADs has not slowed down the flow of foreign investment. The future of sports companies will now depend on their ability to reconcile the financial logic of investment, allowing not only the inflow of capital but also the transfer and sharing of know-how, with the preservation of sporting values and principles.

The SAD Legal Framework thus represents an important step in consolidating the corporate model in Portuguese football, seeking to reconcile attractiveness for foreign investment with respect for the specificities of the national scene, through guarantees of transparency, integrity and governance.