Hull City, Maribor and Acun Ilicali: Is This the Future of Football Club Ownership?

Football club ownership does not usually go like this. But today you have a Turkish TV host, a former football reporter turned media billionaire, running two clubs at the same time across two countries, one fourth in the Premier League, one top of the Slovenian top flight, and making both of them work. Acun Ilicali is doing something remarkable, and the world of football is beginning to notice.

Hull City are fourth in the Premier League after four games, unbeaten, having opened the season by beating Manchester United at the MKM Stadium. Maribor lead the 1. SNL in Slovenia after nine games, unbeaten, scoring 17 goals and winning the Slovenian Cup first-round tie 7-0. Two clubs, two countries, two different level of competition, one owner. Both pointing in the right direction at the same time.

Nicknamed ‘Turkish Simon Cowell,’ for his TV success, Acun Ilicali was born in Edirne and grew up in Erzurum before moving to Istanbul to study English teaching, a course he dropped out of to pursue a career in journalism. He began as a sports reporter for Show TV in the early 1990s. By 2004 he had founded Acun Medya, a production company that bought the broadcast rights to The Voice, Deal or No Deal, Dancing with the Stars, and Survivor, adapting them for Turkish audiences and eventually exporting his own formats to over 20 countries across Europe and Latin America.

He launched TV8 in 2006, then TV8.5 in 2016. He built a television empire before he ever approached a football club. He bought Hull City in January 2022 for approximately £30 million, taking over from the Allam family, whose ownership had turned the fanbase against them. His first act was to cut ticket prices. His second was to fly 320 season ticket holders on a week-long holiday to Antalya to meet him and the players at pre-season training.

Average attendance at the MKM Stadium jumped by over 7,000 in his first season. He really seemed to enjoy being at the club, posting from training sessions, sitting in the stands, and engaging with supporters in a way that corporate ownership structures rarely allow. Fans saw Turkish flags in the MKM Stadium’s away end during FA Cup ties. It was that kind of takeover.

His first four seasons produced three different permanent managers before Sergej Jakirovic, the Croatian coach he appointed in June 2025, took Hull up via the Championship play-offs with Oli McBurnie scoring 19 goals and ending the season as the division’s top scorer.

The promotion was earned through coherent recruitment and a clear system, not through financial excess. Hull broke their own transfer record twice in the summer window that followed, bringing in 13 players for a total outlay of around £76 million, headlined by centre-back Nobel Mendy for £20 million from Rayo Vallecano and goalkeeper Konstantinos Tzolakis for £20 million from Olympiacos. Both scored or kept a clean sheet in the opening win over Manchester United.

Ilicali had told supporters before the window opened that the club had a budget in the region of £200 million. He spent roughly a third of it, selectively, on players with a clear role in Jakirovic’s system and not names that would satisfy a headline.

Hull’s budget remained modest by Premier League standards. Fourth place, this time of the season,  is a product of a functional, well-run club.

Maribor

Ilicali bought Maribor in 2024 after conducting what he described as thorough research into which Slovenian club was the right fit. He arrived in the city, walked the stadium, met the people running the club, and decided. He told Sportklub at the time that his goal was not just European qualification but a good success story. He brought in Zlatko Zahovic, Slovenia’s greatest ever player and the man who once built Maribor into a club that reached the Champions League group stage, as sporting director this summer.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin reportedly encouraged Zahovic personally to take the role.

The Maribor-city-based club had finished fifth last season. Under the restructuring, they are top through nine games, unbeaten in 28 league and cup matches across two seasons under Ilicali’s ownership. The club is targeting a 17th Slovenian title and European football beyond that.

Multi-club ownership is not new. The City Football Group operates Manchester City, New York City FC, Girona, Palermo, and others. Red Bull runs Leipzig, Salzburg, Bragantino, and New York. Both are corporate structures with defined transfer pipelines, shared coaching methodologies, and centralised recruitment. Ilicali’s approach is different in character. He is personally present at both clubs in a way that corporate multi-club ownership never is.

The question of whether it is a model is really a question of whether personality can scale. What makes Ilicali’s ownership work is partly the fact that he behaves like someone who cares whether the teams win, not just whether the assets appreciate. The owners who have damaged clubs in the last decade understood the financial upside of football without understanding what football actually is. Ilicali came from football. He reported on it as a 24-year-old. The Tigers are fourth, Maribor are first; whatever he is doing is working.