ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an understanding of how ownership in professional football links to governance. Academic literature on ownership in European professional sport is limited, and almost entirely confined, to men’s football. The growing independence of professional leagues has led to increasing tensions with national presupposed national associations. The commercialisation phase is arguably underpinned by a commercial logic with the top level of professional sports widely recognised as part of the global entertainment industry. The emergence of different types of ownership and foreign profit-seeking investors has complicated the system of network governance. The historical pyramid of international football embodies a sport logic that departs from the meaning of doing sport and that there is a need for bodies that can organise tournaments and standardise as well as enforce rules. The research literature has established that the “winner’s curse” problem causes a challenge to profitability in European football.
