Official: Dragan Šolak among the new owners of Southampton

The Southampton football club confirmed that "Sport Republic", whose main investor Dragan Šolak, the founder of the United Group, has taken over the controlling part in the ownership of that club.

"Sport Republic" is an investment firm that deals with sports and the entertainment industry. The company bought the shares that were previously owned by the Chinese Gao Jisheng and will cooperate with Katarina Liber, who retained a minority stake.

"During the past two years, together with the owners of our club's shares, we have been looking for a new partner to lead the club in the future. Today we found the perfect solution. Sport Republic is a group of experienced investors, with extensive experience in elite professional sports. Such a combination is very difficult to find, but we are satisfied that an agreement has been reached that will secure our club in the long run," said the press release of Martin Semens, the club's first manager.

"Today is a new beginning for us with a new ownership group. We have found partners with great ambitions for the future, but also those who understand what Southampton represents and the direction it should go. Our strategy is to move forward by sticking to the plans we had in previous years, but with their support, we can achieve this with a new focus and speed. As a club, we never wanted to buy success, but to earn it. Sport Republic gives us the power to improve our operations at all levels, and will help us achieve the success our people work hard for and our fans deserve. Everyone in Southampton welcomes Dragan, Henrik, Rasmus and the people from Sport Republic to our club. We were looking for good people with ambition to lead us into a new era and I am happy to confirm that we have found them".

Šolak, the main investor of the "Sport Republic" consortium, also did not hide his satisfaction with the agreement reached.

"Together with my partners, I have extensive experience in the field of sports and entertainment, and Sport Republic was founded with the aim of combining this expertise and bringing something unique to the market. Southampton has all the qualities we were looking for in a major sports organization. It is a club with exceptional management, exceptional talent development, a team that plays attractive football and has a dedicated fan base. We are overjoyed to complete this acquisition, which is the first step towards implementing our investment strategy. Southampton will be the foundation of the organization we plan to build," says Šolak. .

Sport Republic is an investment company based in London, founded by Henrik Kraft and Rasmus Ankersen, a former director in Brentford, whose main investor is Dragan Šolak. The company's vision is to apply the right features and analytics to help football clubs reach their potential, and the investment in Southampton should be just the first in a series of such projects.

In addition to being the main investor of the new owners of Southampton, Dragan Šolak is also the founder and chairman of the United Group Advisory Board. Under his leadership, United Group grew into a leader in the telecommunications and media sectors in Southeast Europe. One of the important parts of the Group is United Media, the leading media company in the region, which includes five national television channels, over 50 cable channels, as well as 28 web portals, as well as numerous newspapers, magazines and radio stations. N1 and Sport Klub operate within the company, and all media within United Media produce more than 20.000 hours of original content annually.

In September, United Media signed a Letter of Intent regarding the partnership in our media group with the owners of Vijesti, the largest Montenegrin media group. According to that agreement, the ownership share will be 51:49 in favor of UM, with the fact that the choice of editor-in-chief will be the responsibility of the Montenegrin co-owners.

That agreement has not yet been implemented, because the Competition Agency of the Government of Serbia did not approve the transaction even three months after the request was submitted to the UM.