London Nominees Football Fund, distributed by Business Class Group, is targeting offshore and South East Asian investors who believe in the riches of the beautiful game and are looking for a way to invest that is uncorrelated to traditional asset classes.

The fund is focused on returns in four areas of the game: it is looking to invest in a Championship club that would gain from being promoted to the Premiership; it is looking to provide loans into the European market in players contracts; it is seeking to build on Premiership club franchises in Asia, and it is looking to leverage interest in tournaments and other football events in Asia particularly those involving UK clubs.

Of these the investment in a Championship side would be the most costly, but also offer massive potential rewards, says Harpreet Sajjan, investment consultant at Business Class Group.

According to information provided by the fund: "English Championship Clubs can expect a windfall of £43m from TV rights and other distributed incomes when achieving promotion into the English Premiership".

Currently the fund and its consultants, including well recognised football names such as Peter Reid, Jim Smith and Neil Sillett are still in an assessment phase as to which team they may look to take a stake in.

As an offshore vehicle, domiciled in Bermuda but run out of Hong Kong and Thailand, the fund requires a minimum investment of $25,000, but also imposes a cap of $1m per investor. This is done to ensure, for example, the fund cannot become dominated by a small group of investors who may wish to use it as a bid vehicle for taking over a club for their own interests.

Returns targeted are 7 per cent in the first year, 9 per cent in the second, before hitting 10-12 per cent by year three. This does not discount any success of a Championship club, which could see returns in a single year rise sharply by 40 per cent or more. But that is not a return the fund wishes to launch on.

Funds focused on alternative assets promising performance uncorrelated with equities or fixed income have been gaining traction in recent years. Some have gained traction following the heavy losses made by hedge funds or other types of funds reliant on high levels of leverage coupled coupled with liquidity in derivatives markets.

Figures published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors earlier this autumn suggested that prices of antiques and arts in the UK were rising. However, these types of assets can be illiquid. And lack of correlation does not always mean values of the underlying assets are heading in a direction that favours investors.

Wine sales have been hit globally by the fall in consumption, including at the upper end of the market. Consider the Curzon Cap Fine Wine Geared Growth Fund, which in the year to 12 November returned -3.49 per cent, according to Financial Express Analytics.

Performance of some alternative investment funds over 1-yr



Source: Financial Express Analytics

ARCH Fine Wine returned -25.59 per cent, while Vinum Fine Wine Fund returned -15.79 per cent over the period.

A better performer has been the MERIT Art Photography, which returned 25.14 per cent in sterling terms. And elsewhere there are attempts to get sports-based investments off the ground closer to the UK, such as Centaur Global’s push to put in place a regulated product to be able to offer a collective investment approach to sports betting.