Jude Bellingham backs Birmingham Phoenix

Jude Bellingham has become the latest elite footballer to step into team ownership, taking a 1.2% stake in The Hundred franchise Birmingham Phoenix. The Real Madrid and England midfielder has invested an estimated £1 million, buying a small slice of equity from Warwickshire and Knighthead Capital, the US group that acquired 49% of the franchise in 2025. Bellingham has framed the move as a way to “give back” to Birmingham, the city where he grew up and first broke through as a professional.

The Phoenix are yet to win a men’s or women’s Hundred title, but sit inside a wider Knighthead plan to develop a “sports quarter” in Birmingham, including a proposed 62,000-seat stadium and upgraded infrastructure around Edgbaston. For Warwickshire, player-capital joins institutional capital on the shareholder register, adding star power to a property still building its competitive and commercial identity.

Bellingham’s stake turns a local-franchise story into a global one, showing how cross-sport athlete ownership is spreading beyond US leagues into newer formats like The Hundred while giving the Phoenix instant cultural and marketing upside. It also wraps franchise equity into a wider urban-regeneration narrative around Knighthead’s Birmingham “sports quarter”, signalling how civic identity, infrastructure and fandom are increasingly being bundled into the same investment thesis register, adding star power to a property still building its competitive and commercial identity.