The times of the stereotypical local businessman soccer chairman are dying out.

A lot of professional football clubs are owned by other companies. Many individuals are football fans and that includes a lot of people in the business world. They may have dreamed of being a soccer player or manager, and ownership may be the best chance for them to enter top level sport. Soccer is a very expensive sport, rendering it difficult to make a profit, however it is quite popular, so that the advertising opportunities are endless. If a business can be connected with a soccer club, then it's feasible to reach fans all around the globe, and ownership is among the best ways to get it done. The ownership may be expensive, nevertheless the company could make it back in sales of their service or product. Very few people outside of Thailand would know the name of the company owned by Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, but since his father led the company into taking over a famous football club, their name is famous around the world.

A somewhat brand new type of soccer club ownership model that has emerged in recent years is that of state-owned sovereign wealth funds. These have been led by countries that typically desire to diversify their economies from a single dominant sector. Owning a football club not just is an investment itself, but also can signify towards the world that the nation is available for business in fresh sectors. The soccer clubs themselves can benefit because they generally have access to more funds than is usually available to an individual or a business. The club of which Yousef Al-Obaidly is a board member of, for example, is becoming one of the more successful clubs of the past decade and brought a larger level of competitive variety on the European stage.

There exists a large amount of conversation in soccer about who truly owns a soccer club. Even though the owners of a football club are the people that legally are in control of the club, it is argued they are simply custodians, and that the actual owners are the fans as they have the heart and soul of a soccer club. There are, nonetheless, clubs that are literally owned by the fans. Some have board of directors consisting of independent businesspeople and former players, like Oliver Kahn, but the majority of the ownership is held by fans who pay to be formal club members. Corporations may possess stocks of these clubs too, however the fans are the ones that have the true deciding votes and stop the club from having total outside ownership. Fan-ownership may prevent really drastic modifications from occurring that may take place under alternative ownership models, like relocation to a new city or altering the club's name.