Is SixFive Sports And Entertainment Behind The Huddersfield Town Takeover?

The papers are swirling in England: with Huddersfield Town’s takeover by a mystery North American investor now completed, fans understandably want to know who’s set to take the reigns of the struggling English Championship side.

While some early rumours have indicated that Vancouver Whitecaps ownership group is involved, we posit to you another possibility: that this rumour got the city correct, but the owners wrong.

Enter SixFive Sports and Entertainment.

The North American ownership consortium currently owns and operates two Canadian Premier League sides, Pacific FC and Vancouver FC, and we’d reportedly previously that one of the reasons the CPL’s own Director of Football joined forces with them was their ambitions to expand into European football club ownership.

We’d heard that ambition was specifically focused on English football, and can confirm that SixFive Sports and Entertainment has actively engaged with multiple European clubs that have been listed on the market.

The group’s newest team, Vancouver FC, is set to launch this year and recently sent three of their own players to train with Huddersfield Town, which is quite the coincidence.

SixFive Sports and Entertainment is a venture backed by an ownership consortium led by Dean Shillington (the President of Knightsbridge Capital, a hefty asset-based lender based in Vancouver), former Canadian national team players Rob Friend and Josh Simpson, and a privately held investment firm from Toronto called Starlight Investments.

This group helped launch Pacific FC in 2019, with Vancouver FC entering the fold this season. They have simultaneously branched out into modular soccer stadium construction through SixFive Stadiums.

While the ownership group has remained quiet regarding its potential involvement in the Huddersfield Town takeover, there’s certainly enough pieces to the puzzle that to it a very real possibility – though this is far from any concrete confirmation.

For what it’s worth, the owners behind Vancouver FC have been misidentified as the Whitecaps before: Mexican media had reported that Club Puebla youngster Cristian Mares was set for the Whitecaps only for him to land with Vancouver FC, and weeks later the exact same thing happened with Liga MX veteran Gael Sandoval.

As a newer entity, the Canadian Premier League (and thus, owners of its clubs) aren’t the first to spring to mind on a global scale – though that isn’t indicative of a lack of capital or investment power.

Returning focus to SixFive Sports and Entertainment, we’d heard the scope of their interest in European football will extend beyond just one club – and perhaps on divisions lower than the English Championship.

Whoever ultimately pans out to be the Huddersfield Town buyer, former owner Dean Hoyle sold them a 100% shareholding stake this week, subjective to the completion of legislative and governance procedures.

Huddersfield Town are currently third from the bottom of the English Championship and are in for a relegation battle.