Javelin Strategy Group coined the term “The Gang of 5” in a white paper published in 2013. This select group (Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay/PayPal, and Apple) represent the key payment tech disruptors in Javelin’s view. While other companies are obviously engaged in disrupting payments these key players have both the intellectual and monetary capital to dominate this space.

The English Premier League (EPL) is considered one of the top football leagues globally. Okay, soccer to those that insist on this U.S. centric term. The EPL, similar to FinTech and payments, is routinely dominated by their version of “The Big 5”: Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City. The following comparison analyzing each team’s strengths and weaknesses mirrors that of their FinTech counterpart. The teams are listed in order based upon the final 2014 EPL standings.

Full confession from me – I’m an Arsenal fanatic. I’ve played soccer all my life and all it took to hook me with respect to Arsenal was watching Thierry Henry and the 2004 Invincible s Gunners’ squad to create a fan for life. Soccer is called “The Beautiful Game” by those that love the sport and my Arsenal team (normally) plays the way the game was meant to be played – as art.

Man City / Google

Manchester City (1st place)

• Money isn’t an issue: Owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group (an estimated family fortune of $1 trillion).
• Best paid team in global sports (Source: ESPN 4/16/2104)
• Can afford to make defensive mistakes as they have multiple goal scorers (Yaya Touré, Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko)
• FinTech followers: Dave Birch (@dgwbirch)

Google

• Spent $17 bil in M&A over past 2 years. This is more than their top 5 other rivals combined (Source: Mashable 01/15/2014).
• Ranked #1 in Fortune’s 2013 ‘Best Companies to Work For’.
• Do you remember Dodgeball, Google Labs, Google X, Google Video, Google Notebook, or Google+ (had to include the last one). They can afford to fail as their hits outweigh the misses. Big time.

Liverpool / PayPal

Liverpool (2nd place)

• New leadership – Brendan Rodgers assumed role in 2013. His leadership and coaching style resulted in a 2^nd place finish in 2014, one ‘slip’ away from a title.
• Acquired great talent to support captain Steven Gerrard: Raheem Sterling in 2010, Luis Suárez in 2011, and Daniel Sturridge in 2013.
• Loyal fan base: Despite being a ‘smaller’ club LFC has 2.7 mil Twitter followers (3^rd in the EPL and an estimated 70 mil global fans (Source: BleacherReport).
• FinTech followers: Mike Dudas (@mdudas), Simon Taylor (@sytaylor)

PayPal

• New leadership making impacts – David Marcus assumed the role of PayPal CEO in April 2012. He is seen as a dynamic leader driving significant change in the organization.
• Acquired great talent via M&A: Zong (David Marcus), Iron Pearl (Stan Chudnovsky), Braintree/Venmo, etc.
• Loyal fan base: 148 mil active accounts and available in 193 global markets (Source: PayPal). Most trusted brand by consumers for mobile payments (Source: Javelin Strategy 2013 study).

Chelsea / Amazon

Chelsea (3rd place)

• ‘The Special One’ – coach José Mourinho. All he does is win: 17 trophies (so far) across multiple leagues in Europe.
• All they do is win: 15 trophies since 2000.
• Ruthless in their playing style. Do they ‘park the bus’ in games (play defensively)? Yes. Do they win most games this way? Yes.
• FinTech followers: Jason Marshall (@_JasonMarshall)

Amazon

• ‘The Special One’ – Jeff Bezos. He is considered by many to be ‘The New Steve Jobs’. All he does is create new markets, distribution channels, and business models.
• Amazon #1 in online sales ($67.9 billion in 2013). It sells more than the next 10 biggest competitors online, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Netflix, and Apple. (Source: VentureBeat).
• Ruthless is one term used to describe Amazon’s retail strategy. As Bezos is found of stating “Your margin is my opportunity.”

Arsenal / Facebook (4th place)

Arsenal

• The average tenure of an EPL coach is 11 months. Arsene Wenger just completed his 17^th season as the coach of Arsenal.
• Arsenal have won 3 EPL titles and 5 FA Cups under Wenger, but suffered through a 9 year trophy drought between 2005 and 2014.
• Wenger has heavily targeted European players throughout his career (Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp, and Patrick Viera for example).
• FinTech followers: Sam Maule (@sammaule), Brad Leimer (@leimer), Ray Lee (@raylee), Dion Lisle (@dionlisle), Phil Allen (@philballen)

Facebook

• Long tenured leadership: Mark Zuckerberg is turning 30 years old. And he has been FB CEO for a decade. Feel old now?
• Mixed bag when it comes to payments. Facebook Credits was dropped and now Facebook is pursuing an e-money license in Ireland. Don’t count them out though. If you recall, Facebook was very late to the mobile ad space. Look how that’s going.
• Facebook appears to be targeting Europe to (re)enter the payments space. Roughly 75% of Facebook’s 1 billion users are outside of the U.S.

Man United / Apple

Manchester United (** Man U finished 7^th but trust me, this was a one-off. Like the Terminator “They’ll be back”.)

• Long history of dominating the league and holds the record for the most Premier League titles (13).
• The most popular club in the world with 659 million global fans (Source: Bleacher Report).
• Sir Alex Ferguson, hugely successful coach of Man U since 1986, retired in 2013. His handpicked successor, David Moyes, didn’t last one season before being fired in 2014.
• FinTech followers: ?

Apple

• Has dominated the tech space through new product introductions such as iTunes, iPhone, and iPad resulting in $150.6 billion cash reserves in 2014.
• Apple was recognized (again) as the world’s most popular brand by Forbes in 2013. The ‘Cult of Mac’ is well documented including Apple’s 800 million iTune accounts. As many have noted ‘Accounts on File’ doesn’t equate to digital payments success; however, what a problem to have.
• Tim Cook has struggled at times to be seen as the correct successor to the legendary Steve Jobs. Time, revenue, and new product introductions (perhaps payments?) will define Tim Cook’s legacy.

Other EPL team/tech combinations include:

• Everton (5^th place). The ‘Toffee’s’ performed well above their financial weight as compared to their competition. Tech Team: Starbucks. Arguably the most successful mobile payment app with 10 million accounts. FinTech followers: Bryan Yurcan (@BryanYurcan)
• Tottenham (6^th place). The Spurs under-performed after spending £100 mil in new talent. Tech Team: ISIS. After two years of beta testing ISIS is reporting 20k signups a day for their mobile wallet app. What that has to do with free Jamba Juice and actual transactions… @RayLee summed this up well on Twitter: “ISIS wallet figures – In the world of payments, registrations are vanity – transactions are sanity. O2 Should have remembered that.”
• Southampton (8^th place). Strong start this year but struggled as the season progressed. Tech Team: MasterCard. PayPass product tied to NFC acceptance. Jury still out.
• Stoke City (9^th place). Meh. Sorry Stoke fans. Tech Team: IBM. Meh. Sorry IBM fans…
• Newcastle (10^th place). All-in-all a decent year for Newcastle. Tech Team: Microsoft. All-in-all a decent year for Microsoft.

I’d love to receive comments on the team/tech match-ups; argue with me on why your team wasn’t listed; or let me know what team you follow. Just don’t speak poorly of my Gunners.

And special thanks to @sytaylor for the input on team/tech alignments. This was fun.