CD Leganés, the Spanish soccer club purchased by former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow’s investment group in 2022, will receive its most significant exposure ever to a U.S. audience on Sunday when the team’s match against Real Madrid airs on ABC at 12:30pm ET. The contest represents a massive challenge on a massive stage for a club just promoted to La Liga this season.
Following his firing from the Astros in 2020amid the fallout from the team’s sign-stealing scandal, Luhnow assembled a global soccer investment consortium called Blue Crow Sports Group. The firm’s first acquisition was Mexican second-division club Cancún FC, with Leganés following months later for a reported $41 million.
“[Leganés] was a perfect match for us because it was a club with no debt, that had [recently] been in first division and had a nice infrastructure – nice stadium, good training ground 15 minutes from the central train station in Madrid – and really was a family-run business with a good culture,” Luhnow said.
After narrowly avoiding relegation to the third division in Blue Crow’s first year of ownership, Leganés wildly exceeded expectations by finishing first in Spain’s second division in 2023-24 to earn promotion to the highest level of Spanish soccer for the second time in club history. The jump comes with a hefty increase in TV revenue. While the amount each club receives varies widely based on several criteria, including finishing position and brand value, the 20 La Liga clubs in 2022-23 received an average of $72 million (median of $54 million) while the 22 second-division clubs averaged $9.7 million.