Evangelos Marinakis was filmed appearing to be in a heated altercation during the Euroleague Basketball final in Athens on Sunday, moments after Olympiakos beat Real Madrid 92-85. Footage shared on social media appears to show the 58-year-old wearing a ripped shirt and arguing in the stands while security personnel and a barrier kept him separated from others.
The video does not show the person Marinakis was arguing with, but Greek media reported that it was Grigoris Dimitriadis, a former close advisor to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The scenes drew attention because Marinakis owns both Olympiakos and Nottingham Forest, and because they came on the same day Forest ended their Premier League season with a 1-1 draw at Bournemouth and finished 16th.
Marinakis has owned Forest since 2017, and his time in English football has already brought repeated discipline. In 2024 he was found guilty of improper conduct and given a five-game stadium ban for spitting on the floor as match officials walked past after Forest's 1-0 Premier League defeat by Fulham. Three months later, the FA said a Forest social media post about VAR Stuart Attwell was “an attack on the integrity of a match official on an unparalleled scale,” and the club was fined £750,000.
Forest's official X account had questioned Attwell's integrity after the club said three penalty decisions went against them in a defeat at Everton, and the FA later described the post as “ill-chosen and irresponsible.” That background gives Sunday’s Athens footage added weight, because it shows Marinakis back in a public confrontation while his club has just closed a turbulent season that also included a run to the Europa League semi-finals before a 4-1 aggregate defeat by eventual winners Aston Villa.
The immediate question is not whether Marinakis will face another reactionary storm — it is whether anyone at Forest or in Greek football treats this as more than another flashpoint for one of the game’s most combative owners. After a year that already forced the club through three managers in Nuno Espirito Santo, Ange Postecoglou and Sean Dyche before Vitor Pereira secured safety, Forest can least afford another distraction tied to the man who controls the club.
