Shares in Italian football giant Juventus jumped nearly 14% on Monday, after Italy's Agnelli family on Saturday rejected the surprise offer from crypto group Tether that valued the Serie A club at just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).
With 36 Serie A titles to its name, Juventus is Italy's most successful football club, but it has faltered since clinching a ninth straight championship in 2020 and now sits fifth in the table. Shares in Juventus have lost 57% of their value over the past five years, LSEG data showed.
Once home to stars such as Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero and Cristiano Ronaldo, ownership of Juventus helped the Agnellis, the family that created car maker Fiat, to build consensus and popularity in Italy.
The bid from Tether, issuer of the world's most widely used USDT stablecoin, comes at a fraught time for the Agnellis.
The family, often dubbed Italy's royals, has entered talks to sell GEDI, publisher of Italy's La Repubblica and La Stampa newspapers, sparking strikes and concerns about jobs in the local media industry.
Meanwhile, troubles at their main asset, auto company Stellantis, strained relations with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, prompting the automaker a year ago to announce an investment plan in Italy to increase local production.
Tether promises investment in club
The Juventus stock on Monday climbed to its highest level since Nov. 25, after the Agnelli family's holding company Exor said it had no intention of selling any of its shares in the Turin-based club despite the bid implying a 21% premium to Friday's closing price.
Run by Italian Paolo Ardoino, a Juventus supporter, Tether has built a stake of over 10% in the club.
In its statement late on Friday, El Salvador-based Tether said it was prepared to invest up to 1 billion euros to support Juventus' sporting and commercial development.
UEFA, European football's top governing body, caps the amount that clubs can spend on player transfers and wages as a proportion of their revenue, making it harder for new owners to spend very large sums to pursue a rapid improvement in results on the field.
Juventus accounted for around 2% of Exor's net asset value at Friday's market prices, analyst Martino De Ambroggi from Equita said, noting a sale would have cut Exor's net debt by some 650 million euros to around 1.6 billion euros.
Such a disposal would have also "marked the exit from an asset whose capital increases over the past six years have absorbed around 600 million euros," De Ambroggi added.
Tether's USDT stablecoin dominates the U.S. dollar-referenced stablecoin market, accounting for around 56% of the total, according to the Bank of Italy.
Stablecoins – digital assets pegged one-to-one to traditional currencies, mostly used by crypto traders – have gained a market value of nearly $300 billion in a decade, with U.S. dollar-linked tokens accounting for 98% of that value.