Key notes
- Stablecoin issuer Tether has submitted an all-cash offer to acquire Juventus football club.
- The offer was valued at more than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), a premium to the club’s market capitalization.
- Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family and owner of Juventus for over a century, unanimously rejected the proposal.
Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family and owner of Juventus for more than a century, on December 13 rejected an unsolicited cash buyout proposal from Tether Investments, blocking a €1.1 billion bid for its 65.4% stake in Juventus Football Club.
In this article, let’s try to analyze what happened and why the attempt failed.
What Tether had on the plate for Juventus
Tether had offered €2.66 per share for Exor’s stake, a 21% premium to Juventus’ Dec. 12 close of €2.19 in Milan, according to terms reported by Reuters and Exor’s advisers.
The proposal implied a stock valuation of just over €1.0 billion, or approximately $1.17 billion to $1.30 billion depending on the exchange rate on the transaction date. Exor’s rejection came less than 24 hours after Tether made the offer public. Juventus shares last traded near that level before the offer after an initial spike faded as the trade closed.
Tether had presented this decision as a long-term play. In its proposal, summarized in market reports from Nasdaq and others, Tether said it intended to finance the deal entirely with its own capital and then launch a tender offer on the float at the same level of €2.66.
On It should be noted that Tether already has a minority stake in Juventus.
I’m pretty sure the CEO of Tether just used the company to buy Juventus because he’s a Juventus fan.
Mans has been scheming since the day he was promoted from CTO to CEO. pic.twitter.com/gZImA41CRz
– Steve Cubes (@SteveCubes) December 13, 2025
Some analysts believe the bid was grossly undervalued, as Juventus has its own stadium and one of the biggest fan bases in the EU. However, separate coverage citing Tether’s pitch deck reported a commitment to invest an additional billion euros in Juventus over time for stadium, retail and sports development, bringing the total capital deployed to €2.1 billion.
Juventus, valued at 1.1 billion euros by Tether: despite its market capitalization of 840 million euros, this figure is not considered appropriate for a club with its own stadium and by far the largest fan base in Italy. For comparison, AC Milan was bought by RedBird for 1.2 billion euros. pic.twitter.com/IBClLuBCC6
– CALCIO WITH RINO Z (@ZaurriniRino) December 13, 2025
Why Exor declined the offer
In its official note, Exor reiterated that it has “no intention of selling any of its shares in Juventus to any third party, including but not limited to El Salvador-based Tether.”
The holding company highlighted that Exor and the Agnelli family have supported Juventus for “over a century”. It presented the club as a vital long-term asset rather than a financial one. The timing comes three weeks after Juventus raised around €97.8 million through a rights issue aimed at reducing debt and recapitalizing its operations.
Juventus released a separate video message on their own channels in which Exor CEO John Elkann doubled down on his stance. “Juventus, our history and our values are not for sale,” Elkann said in the video. He added that Juve has been in the family for 102 years and four generations have carried it through “difficult times” and title races.
John Elkann: “Juventus, our history and our values are not for sale.” pic.twitter.com/nC6pX8s327
—JuventusFC 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@juventusfcen) December 13, 2025
Exor’s response was direct. No sales, to Tether or anyone else. This position matches general information provided to Reuters in which sources close to the Agnelli camp stressed that there was “no intention” to leave Juventus, despite a decade of low or negative net profit and a 27% share price decline this year before the offer surfaced.
For traders who read through the noise, the trading spread is gone. The more interesting line is what this signals about crypto capital trying to buy old money franchises.
What we learned from Tether’s reality check
Tether stress-tested whether a $130 billion stablecoin issuer could deploy a billion-euro bounty check and unleash a century-old family asset, and failed instantly. This tells us two things.
First, the historical controlling shareholders of renowned sports brands still prioritize governance, heritage and political optics over crypto liquidity, even when the premium reaches 20% and another billion euros of investments are committed.
Second, as more token issuers pile on reserve revenue liquidity and seek real yield, they will continue to probe high-profile regulated assets. Regulators, rating agencies and shareholders now have a live model of how European family holding companies are responding. Any future approach to listed crypto clubs will require more than just an increase in valuation. It will need a governance structure and a set of reputational measures that established owners can defend to their own boards and national regulators.
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Yana Khlebnikova joined CoinSpeaker as an editor in January 2025, following previous stints at Techopedia, crypto.news, Cointelegraph and CoinMarketCap, where she honed her expertise in cryptocurrency journalism.
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