Juventus Champions League Leg Win Highlights 200% Rise This Year

(Bloomberg) -- Juventus Football Club SpA shares jumped at the Milan opening after the Italian soccer team controlled by the billionaire Agnelli family beat Monaco in the first leg of the Champions League semifinal, highlighting a more-than 200 percent rally for the stock this year.

Juventus rose as much as 8.7 percent to 1.03 euros, bringing the company near its highest level since 2002 and giving it a market value of 970 million euros ($1.1 billion). The shares of the soccer team, which could win its sixth consecutive Italian championship as early as this weekend, later erased their gains to trade down 1.2 percent at 94 cents at 11:12 a.m.

The Turin-based club is the biggest gainer by far on the 22-member STOXX Europe Football Index, which covers all soccer clubs listed on a stock exchange in Europe and Eastern Europe and is up about 22 percent this year. Next-placed Celtic Plc has gained about 35 percent in that time.

Getting to the Champions League final would guarantee Juventus an additional bonus of at least 11 million euros from UEFA, the sport's European governing body, according to its website. The Champions League will generate 1.27 billion euros this season, shared by participant clubs. A single team could earn as much as 57.2 million euros in addition to its share of the 507 million-euro “market pool,” according to the website.

The Agnelli family, which has owned Juventus for more than 90 years, controls Ferrari NV and Fiat Chrysler. Its holding company Exor NV owns 64 percent of Juventus. Andrea Agnelli, the cousin of Exor CEO John Elkann, has been chairman of Juventus since 2010. Juventus's profit more than doubled to 72 million euros in the first half of its fiscal year as revenue rose by 110 million euros to 314.9 million euros, helped by player transfers.

Juventus in January presented a new branding strategy to expand revenue from sales of merchandising internationally. Its efforts come as some of its rivals have been sold to Chinese investors, highlighting the value of Italian soccer teams.

A unit of Chinese retail group Suning Holdings Group Co. acquired about 70 percent of one of Milan's Serie A teams, Inter Milan, for 270 million euros in June 2016. Silvio Berlusconi's investment company Fininvest SpA concluded a 740 million-euro sale of the other Milan club, AC Milan, to little-known Chinese investors in April.

Juventus won 2-0 in Monaco on Wednesday night as Gonzalo Higuain scored twice, taking the team closer to its second Champions League final in the last three seasons. Juventus has won the Champions League twice, the last time in 1996.

In 2015, the last time Juventus reached the final, the Italians earned 28 million euros more than any other team, including Barcelona, the team that won.

--With assistance from Tariq Panja

To contact the reporter on this story: Tommaso Ebhardt in Milan at tebhardt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net, Jerrold Colten, Angela Cullen