After three consecutive seasons of relegation battles and at least one fan banner that would make a publicist wince, LAFC has sold its majority stake in Swiss club Grasshopper to multi-club operation Bridge Football Group.
The Hollywood-backed ownership group — which includes Will Ferrell, Magic Johnson, and entertainment executives Peter Guber and Mark Shapiro — bought Grasshopper from Wolverhampton's Chinese owners in January 2024 with presumably grander ambitions than scrambling to stay in a 12-team league. It didn't work out. LAFC is calling it a "strategic realignment of its international development network." Grasshopper fans in April called it something considerably less diplomatic, displaying an expletive-laden banner at a home match demanding a sale.
A club that used to matter
This is Switzerland's most decorated club — 27 league titles, a history that predates FIFA's formation in the same city they now share a stadium with rivals FC Zurich. Grasshopper doesn't even own the Letzigrund, a track and field ground they split with their city rivals. That detail says a lot about where the club sits in 2025.
Their last league title came 23 years ago. Their last Swiss Cup win was 13 years back. Three straight seasons of fighting to stay in the top flight under celebrity ownership hasn't moved the needle — it's just burned goodwill.
Bridge Football Group, which also operates clubs in lower-tier Italian and Dutch football, now inherits whatever this rebuild looks like. Their multi-club model suggests they see a pathway to relevance that LAFC couldn't find. Whether that's through player development pipelines or a more coherent football structure than what came before, the bar isn't exactly high.
LAFC, meanwhile, pivots to Austrian second-tier side Wacker Innsbruck as its international development anchor. That's a quieter stage. Maybe a smarter one.
Grasshopper's odds of Swiss Super League survival next season now depend entirely on how quickly Bridge Football Group can get a football operation running — and whether they've studied what LAFC got wrong.
