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- Juventus shares dropped 11% on Wednesday after the Italian football club crashed out of the Champions League.
- Star striker Cristiano Ronaldo scored early but Dutch club Ajax fired back twice, bringing the aggregate score to 3:2 and knocking Juventus out of the competition.
- Juventus could have netted upwards of $100 million if it won the Champions League.
- Watch Juventus and Ajax trade live.
Juventus shares tumbled more than 10% on Wednesday after Italy’s most successful soccer club crashed out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals.
Star striker Cristiano Ronaldo scored early in the team’s second-leg fixture against Ajax, but the Dutch club fired back twice, bringing the aggregate score to 3:2 and knocking Juventus out of Europe’s premier soccer competition.
As Juventus will now miss out on publicity and financial rewards — last year’s champions Real Madrid netted more than $100 million in prize money — investors balked. They celebrated Ajax’s win by sending its shares up 8%.
Juventus shares have soared and plunged with the team’s fortunes in the past month. They slumped after the club lost 2:0 to Atlético Madrid in the first leg of the round of 16, then rallied after Ronaldo scored a trio of goals in the return fixture to secure an unlikely progression to the quarter-finals.
Juventus shares almost doubled after it signed Ronaldo last summer, as investors bet the former Real Madrid man could help the "Bianconeri" finally win the Champions League — they’ve lost in five previous finals. They now trade at €1.42 ($1.61), down from around €1.67 last September when hype around the player peaked.
Around 520,000 shirts were sold in just 24 hours after Ronaldo’s signing, according to reports — about $62.4 million worth of trade. Juventus also sold €150 million of bonds ($169 million) in February to cash in on the excitement around its new striker.
Ronaldo’s early departure from the competition will fuel criticism that the player is past his prime. Juventus investors will be hoping he can prove them wrong next year.
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Source: Business Insider – tmohamed@businessinsider.com (Theron Mohamed)