Which Football Clubs Could You Buy With The $1.5 Billion Powerball Jackpot?

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a frenzy going on in the United States and it's over the Powerball Lottery. The current jackpot for the lottery is an astonishing $1.5 billion with a cash value of $930 million, because, you know, taxes. 

That’s an absurd amount of money. So we got to thinking about what we could (and couldn't) do with it if we won, even though the chances of that happening are mind-bogglingly small (the Wall Street Journal did an excellent job of providing a visualization of your chances of winning — prepare to scroll, a lot). Namely, what clubs could we buy – and couldn't we buy – if we won the jackpot? 

Lucky for us, Forbes regularly provides valuations for the most valuable clubs in the world. Their most recent list came out in May of 2015. Here are the 8 clubs that you couldn’t buy, because they are too expensive.

Football Clubs You Could Not Buy With A $1.5 Billion Powerball Jackpot

1. Real Madrid - $3.26 billion
2. Barcelona - $3.16 billion
3. Manchester United - $3.1 billion
4. Bayern Munich - $2.35 billion
5. Manchester City - $1.38 billion
6. Chelsea - $1.37 billion
7. Arsenal - $1.31 billion
8. Liverpool - $982 million

And here’s the other list...clubs you could actually buy. Just think, you could buy any one of these clubs if you won the Powerball lottery. We'll start this listing from #1 so that you can see Juventus is the most expensive club you could afford for $930 million. But there are some other great clubs on this list.

Football Clubs You Could Buy With A $1.5 Billion Powerball Jackpot

1. Juventus - $837 million
2. AC Milan - $775 million
3. Borussia Dortmund - $700 million
4. Paris Saint-Germain - $634 million
5. Tottenham Hotspur - $600 million
6. FC Schalke 04 - $572 million
7. Inter Milan - $439 million
8. Atletico de Madrid - $436 million
9. Napoli - $353 million
10. Newcastle United - $349 million
11. West Ham United - $309 million
12. Galatasaray - $294 million

If we can trust that Forbes has in fact listed the 20 most valuable clubs (a fair assumption considering Forbes’ esteemed reputation in the realm of financial journalism), then we can assume that literally every other club in the world is cheaper than the ones listed. Not exactly Mensa stuff, but it does allow us to say that if we won the Powerball jackpot we could buy any other club in the world that isn't in the top 8 spots on the Forbes list. Fancy Swansea? They are yours. Want to take Villarreal for a spin? No problem. How about the Western Sydney Wanderers? You could probably have them and still have enough for several other clubs.

That’s a lot of buying power, so let’s have some fun with this. What are some clubs that are not that valuable, but stick out as being fun to own for other reasons?

You could buy…

• FC Volga Ulyanovsk, formerly known as FC Start, and rename it FC End.
• Both sides of the biggest rivalry in Mexico, Club America ($219.2 million) and Chivas de Guadelajara ($328.1 million). Why? We don't know, maybe in order change the competitive landscape of Liga MX and CONCACAF Champions League soccer forever and merge the two clubs into one gigantic powerhouse. Is that blasphemous? It sounds blasphemous.
• New York City FC, in which Manchester City currently holds an 80% stake, and sell it to Manchester City’s biggest rival, Manchester United. You know, for the LOLz.
• Harpo’s FC, a semi-pro club based in Boulder, Colorado. Now, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is one of the most modern and expensive ($750 million) stadiums in the world. So with $930 million you could build Harpo’s a state of the art stadium that’s entirely too big for it (right now), and put on a match day that would make Queen singing “We Are the Champions” after you beat a traffic light look reasonable. 
• Sunderland AFC, who are currently 19th in the Premier League and in serious danger of relegation. According to transfer valuations just released by CIES, you would still have enough money left to mount the most gaudy transfer campaign in history by buying Lionel Messi ($272.15 million transfer valuation), Cristiano Ronaldo ($123.75 million), and Neymar Jr ($176.62 million) during the January transfer window. Considering a Premier League team has needed around 70 points to qualify for the Champions League over the past decade, your newly star-studded Sunderland squad could pull off the most unexpected second half campaign in league history if it won every single one of its remaining 18 games in order to qualify for the Champions League. A tall order, but we think Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar would be up for that challenge.

Honestly we could spend all day thinking of ridiculous s*** to do with $930 million, and we are sure you could too. So if you have any ideas for what you would do in the world of football with $930 million, let us know.

Follow me on Twitter: @yetly