After earning Premier League promotion, Leeds chairman Paraag Marathe shared details of what it's been like to be part of the journey over two years
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Leeds earn Premier League promotionClub chairman speaks on past two years of ownershipPraises club for winning English ChampionshipFollow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images SportWHAT HAPPENED?
Leeds United won the English Championship on Sunday with a 100-point regular season that saw them top J.J. Watt's Burnley via goal-differential, though both sides gained promotion to the English Premier League for the 2025-26 season.
Speaking to Front Office Sports, Leeds United chairman Paraag Marathe – who also serves as president of 49ers Enterprises and EVP of football operations for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers – spoke on the eventful campaign the club had in the 2025-26 campaign along with their ambitions as a franchise and more.
have multiple celebrity minority owners like actors Will Ferrell and Russell Crowe, as well as professional athletes like Jordan Spieth and Michael Phelps, helping them financially. Ahead of the 2024-25 season, Marathe spearheaded a deal to bring on Red Bull as a minority club investor and kit sponsor. With Leeds back in the top flight, Marathe dove into the past two years of ownership with the English side.
"It’s been a pretty challenging two years," Marathe said. "When we first took this club over, we knew that Leeds United had so much untapped potential – and still does have so much room to grow. But gosh, it was a club that had just been relegated, had a credit card bill of over 250 million pounds of payables on transfers for players who were either already not playing for us or we were trying to move on from, or had loan clauses to play elsewhere.
"Organizationally, we had to bring in people to stabilize on the football and commercial side. It was a lot of work. In some ways, the difficult journey makes this all the more rewarding."
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Marathe admitted that Premier League promotion was crucial for them this season, amid the investment that ownership put into them over the past two years.
"Make no mistake about this: There was even more jeopardy involved if we did not get promoted this season, because we were so heavily invested, via credit card bills, when we were last in the Premier League. So, buying players without yet paying for them. I’m talking bills and payments that are still due in 2027 and 2028," he said. "There was a lot of pressure on us. So, as part of us taking this club over back in 2023, it was an understanding with us and our investors that there’s going to be a significant capital injection required just to get us to baseline last year and this season. It was a risk and a chance that we all took because we believe in where we can go."
With their promotion to the Premier League next season, Marathe admitted he is not worried about their current valuation, rather, he's focused on getting the most out of the group next campaign.
"Valuation is kind of irrelevant to me because right now I’m just focused on getting the club as competitive as we can. And honestly, the name of the game is survival," he explained. "It’s not lost on me that all three promoted clubs from last season are getting relegated. I know it’s going to be a challenge. I’m trying to set us up for: What do we do differently? How can we be differentiated? How can we be a little bit more smart than we have been in the past to be able to stay up?
One of Marathe's main goals as chairman of Leeds is to expand their famed stadium, Elland Road, from 37,645 to up to 56,500 seats. He believes it will be a crucial part of their forthcoming success as an organization.
"Non-financially, the thing that I’m probably most excited about is that we have an opportunity for more Leeds United supporters to attend matches. We have a 28,000-person paid season ticket waiting list. We are the largest one-club city in the country. So, being able to get more supporters to be able to watch their club live is going to be really neat to do. Second to that, yes, it’s going to generate more revenue for us, and that revenue is going to go right into players."
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Both Tom Brady's Birmingham City and Ryan Reynolds' Wrexham earned promotion to the English Championship this season, too. The celebrity-driven ownership of each club has been a fun story to watch for Marathe.
"Really awesome what they’ve been able to do," Marathe said. "Wrexham, three leagues in three years. Birmingham City coming right back up in such a dominant way. I can’t speak to how they’ve done it. I could speak to how we’ve done it – we wanted to be hands-on, take a lot of the key learnings that we had from the 49ers, things that worked for us. I happen to be the beneficiary as vice chairman here at Leeds for a while, of being able to see how not to do it. So, I sort of had both. I was equipped with both playbooks. I think that’s really helped us, and I’ll continue to be very hands-on to help us grow."
Getty Images SportWHAT NEXT FOR LEEDS?
After winning promotion to the English Premier League for the 2025-26 season, they're now on a break until the campaign begins in August. Players, staff, and fans alike will be patient as the summer goes on until they're playing in the top flight in roughly three months time.
