ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the governance of major North American professional team sport by providing conceptual background and secondary data on ownership, aims to provide a basic understanding of the context and to suggest future research needs in the area. Club ownership in professional team sport in North America is characterised by wealth, syndicates and collective bargaining with the players. The distributed club ownership model is what characterises the majority of club ownership in each of the major North American leagues today, with some slight alterations league by league. The chapter provides the background on ownership, governance and decision-making in the major North American professional sport clubs. Clubs are members of leagues and adhere to the rules of the league which are determined by the league’s Board of Governors, comprised of one representative of the ownership of each club and executed by the league Commissioner, who is hired by the Board of Governors.
