ABSTRACT
Academic literature on ownership in European professional sport is limited, and almost entirely confined, to men’s football. The ownership of professional football clubs has become a prominent issue with a heightened level of media attention, perhaps because it is a way for individuals (or nation-states) to buy respectability and enhance legitimacy and soft power (Franck, 2010). Other concerns have centred on how ownership has increasingly become detached from the communities in which football clubs have their historical roots and traditional fan base (Morrow, 2003). More recently, scholars have sought to understand how ownership models impact on the business models of clubs (e.g., Franck, 2010; Rohde & Breuer, 2017) and whether there is a link between ownership structure and organisational performance (Wilson, Plumley & Ramchandani, 2013).
