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Cryptocurrency giant Tether has made a €1.1bn all-cash offer to acquire Italian football club Juventus, in a bid underscoring the burgeoning ambitions and newfound riches of the stablecoin provider.
El Salvador-based Tether said it was proposing to pay €2.66 per share for the 65.4 per cent stake in the club held by Exor, the holding company of the billionaire Agnelli family which has controlled the club since 1923.
Pending regulatory approval, Tether said it would then move to buy the remainder of shares at the offer price.
Juventus shares were worth €2.19 a piece at market close on Friday with a market capitalisation of just under €925mn. The Tether offer values the club at €1.1bn.
On Saturday, Exor “unanimously rejected an unsolicited proposal submitted by Tether Investments”. It added that it had “no intention of selling any of its shares in Juventus to a third party”.
Tether has built an 11.5 per cent stake in Juventus over the course of this year and the bid is set to further inflame tensions between the company’s leadership, who hail from Italy, and Exor’s chief executive John Elkann.
Tether chief Paolo Ardoino said on Friday evening: “Juventus has always been part of my life.”
“I grew up with this team. As a boy, I learned what commitment, resilience, and responsibility meant by watching Juventus face success and adversity with dignity.”
The news comes at the end of a difficult week for Exor. The group’s decision to sell its Italian media assets has prompted labour strikes at La Stampa and La Repubblica newspapers and harsh criticism from several Italian politicians.
Elkann and his family are staunch Juventus supporters and have owned the club, based in their hometown of Turin, for more than 100 years. A stake was floated on the Milan stock exchange in 2001.
People close to Elkann say he does not intend to disengage from his home country as critics infer, and Juventus and other important Italian assets are not on sale. Though Juventus has faced turbulence over the past few years, “the family is committed to turning the club’s luck around,” one of the people said.
Tether is the world’s largest issuer of stablecoins, a digital token pegged to the value of the US dollar. It has roughly $185bn outstanding of its token USDT and it largely derives income on the interest collected on US Treasuries backing the token.
Tether made $10bn in the first nine months of 2025 and expects to book around $15bn in profits for the full year. It is in the midst of raising $15-20bn at a $500bn valuation from strategic investors and is mounting an expansion in the US.
The group has ploughed its profits into investments in early-stage technology start-ups as well as media companies.
Juventus last won Serie A, the top level of Italian football, in 2020. It suffered big losses during the coronavirus pandemic and sold its outstanding player Cristiano Ronaldo in 2021.
An accounting scandal also rocked the club, which separately failed to launch a breakaway European Super League in 2021. Former president Andrea Agnelli, a central actor in trying to establish the ESL, departed the following year.
The club has fallen behind its main rivals, having watched the likes of Inter Milan, AC Milan and Napoli win the Scudetto, or league title, in recent years.
Additional reporting by Jill R Shah and Sam Agini
