Jets owner Woody Johnson has already tried, and failed, to buy a team in the world’s most competitive and lucrative soccer league, the Premier League. His bid for London-based Chelsea fell short back in 2022. But Friday, a report emerged that Johnson is potentially on the verge of buying a different London-based Premier League team: Crystal Palace. According to The Guardian, Johnson is at the center of a contentious battle for control of Palace, and could be on the verge of acquiring the team – or not. And ultimately, his fate will very likely be decided by the owners of another Jersey-based team. Yes, there are a lot of moving parts. Here’s the situation, as reported by The Guardian: Longtime Cystal Palace chairman Steve Parish, who owns a 10% stake in the club, is pushing for Johnson to buy out the other two minority owners – both of whom have indicated a willingness to sell. It’s serious enough that Johnson attended a Palace game with Parish in London on Monday. It sounds pretty simple, right? It seemed that way when American investor John Textor, who owns the largest stake in Palace (45%), recently indicated he wanted to sell because of mounting frustration over his lack of influence with Parish, who has control of the team (despite owning the smallest stake of the minority owners) because he has the casting vote on the team’s board as the team’s chairman. But Textor is now doing anything but selling. No, Textor is trying to execute what amounts to a hostile takeover by buying the shares of the next highest stakeholders: Josh Harris & David Blitzer – that’s right, the same Harris and Blitzer who own the Devils and 76ers (Harris also owns the Commanders). According to The Guardian, they’re “willing to sell owing to concerns about ballooning costs” of a renovation to Crystal Palace’s stadium. If they sell to Textor, he’ll own more than 80% of the team and be able to force Parish out, and Johnson will continue to be on the outside of the Premier League, looking in. If Harris and Blitzer sell to Johnson, Textor will likely have little choice but to sell his shares to Johnson as well. So yes, it’s still very much up in the air. What’s unclear what kind of impact it will have on the Jets. Financially it seems unlikely to change very much: NFL ownership rights are so lucrative that a team can spend right up to the salary cap and still turn a massive profit. The only other obvious impact it could have is how much time Johnson spends around the Jets: he could be spending a whole lot more time in London if he owns the majority of a Premier League club, something many Jets’ fans would not mind after Johnson drew heavy criticism for firing coach Robert Saleh just five games into the season with the Jets at 2-3 and Aaron Rodgers just five games into his return for a torn Achilles. Either way, Johnson will be in London this fall when the Jets are scheduled to play game there: the date and time will be announced next week. It’s unclear when we’ll find out if Johnson will have two teams playing in London this fall. Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription. Andy Vasquez may be reached at avasquez@njadvancemedia.com.