ABSTRACT
Club ownership in professional team sport in North America is characterised by wealth, syndicates and collective bargaining with the players. Much of this characterisation has to do with the ownership models that have been developed as a result of these dynamics. Although there is considerable discussion on governance-related topics of club ownership in North America in trade journals, newspapers, blogs and books, there exists limited academic research specific to ownership models. The existing body of academic research on ownership in North American major team sport has typically focussed on management aspects, as opposed to overall models – with a lot of work done in the area. For instance, published work that includes ownership as a variable or a key concept include work on club profitability (Nadeau & O’Reilly, 2006), linking ownership structure and perception to team performance (Wilson, Plumley & Ramchandani, 2013), the acceptance of foreign owners by fans (Coombs & Osborne, 2012), perception of team ownership in securing government and community support for urban development projects (Mason, Sant & Soebbing, 2017; Mitrook, Parish & Seltzer, 2008), merchandise sales (O’Reilly, Foster, Murray & Shimizu, 2015), corporate social responsibility (Sheth & Babiak, 2010), legitimacy (Lock, Filo, Kunkel & Skinner, 2015), managing uncertainty (Soebbing & Mason, 2009), brand management (Agyemang & Williams, 2013), relationship management (Hambrick & Kang, 2015) and social media (Abeza, O’Reilly, Seguin & Nzindukiyimana, 2015; Watanabe, Yan & Soebbing, 2015).
