On a cold early-April evening under a clear sky at Gladsaxe Stadium, just outside of Copenhagen, the third-tier Danish soccer club A.B. (short for Akademisk Boldklub) squared off against rival Nykøbing. They came from the island of Falster, in southern Denmark.
The crowd of more than 900 cheered on the action. The Carlsberg flowed. But amid the chants sung in Danish and the monotonic delivery of the in-game announcer, there were hints of English. “Not offside, ref!” “Gotta make that pass. Come on!”
Locals didn’t know what to make of these oddballs clad in green and white (team colors) with lots of owls (team mascot). And it was only when a few wandered back from the V.I.P. box double-fisting plastic cups of beer following A.B.’s second goal with a “Let’s fucking go!” howl that it dawned on everyone nearby—the owners were in town.
Ever since Ted Lasso entered American living rooms, more Americans have been tempted to get involved in European soccer. According to Front Office Sports, 11 of the 48 clubs in England’s Leagues One and Two—the third and fourth tiers—have some level of U.S. ownership. The most publicized purchase came in 2021, when Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchased the lower-level team Wrexham.
Which begs the question: Is owning a small European club something akin to investing in a restaurant or racehorse? A project that’s loads of fun, helpful in making friends, certainly interesting to bring up at a dinner party, but in the end, not a surefire way to a stress-free retirement on the beaches of Barbuda?
Introducing the Owners
That night marked the third time a group of American and British investors had crossed the ocean to cheer on A.B., which they purchased in November 2022. It’s a motley bunch hailing from all kinds of cities, backgrounds, and tax brackets. The collective spirit is high—even giddy.
“The urge to invest in something like a football club is the urge to find community,” says Ben Lyttleton, one of the investors at Five Castles, the owning entity. “You have to remember, we were just coming out of Covid. Everyone felt lost and detached from one another, and one thing football can do is bring people together.”
Lyttleton has worked in soccer his entire career, first as a journalist writing for The Guardian, Sports Illustrated, and The Times of London. As an author of Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty Kick, he charted the evolution, psychology, and history of soccer’s most all-or-nothing play.
The book’s success led to Lyttleton’s advising teams on how to improve their penalty kicks, which led to his working in recruitment. He and his colleagues wondered if it would be possible to own and run a small club affordably. They asked some of their contacts in the sports industry, who didn’t need much persuasion to get involved.
“I was used to being around owners and seeing the issues they faced,” says Lyttleton. “I knew the environment well, and I’d ask, ‘What were your challenges? What would you do differently if you had a chance to do it over?’”
The group’s search for a club landed on a gem. A.B. was a once storied franchise with a history of playing in the top leagues that had fallen on hard times. It had a big stadium. It was in a big city (Copenhagen). It still had a passionate following, and it once counted Niels Bohr, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, as a player. In Denmark, almost everyone speaks English. (Some investors, Lyttleton included, are learning Danish.)
Instead of pursuing venture capital or sovereign-wealth funds, Five Castles adopted a multi-investor approach. The group is a mixture of individuals and L.L.C.’s. I have invested in one of these L.L.C.’s, called Jelias Capital, along with about 100 others. Investment amounts vary; I put in $20,000—a typical amount invested in Jelias—for my small stake in the club.
On the field, thanks in part to the new management, results have been steadily improving. A.B. reached the Danish Cup quarter-final for the first time in 22 years after winning a penalty shoot-out against a top-division side. This season, the team is currently on track to achieve the highest placing in its current tier.
The immediate goal is for A.B. to gain promotion to the second league (the NordicBet Liga), which will then unlock much-needed TV revenue and, eventually, sponsorship deals.
“In terms of revenue, it’s times 11,” says Casper Reinhardt, A.B.’s director of club operations. “And in terms of player value, it’s times three.”
Getting promoted to this land of honey requires finishing first or second. The team will likely have to win out the rest of the season to qualify.
The day after the early-April game, which A.B. won 3–0, investors barnstormed Copenhagen, meeting with the team’s C.E.O. and then visiting the club academy before sitting down with head coach Joey Guðjónsson, who used a projector and proprietary software to break down the previous night’s match. “Is there going to be a quiz on this afterwards?” asked one investor.
“I’m not sure others get too into that stuff, but I love it,” says Coleman O’Donovan, a former Procter & Gamble executive from Chicago who played soccer at the University of Pennsylvania. O’Donovan appreciates A.B.’s start-up ethos; investors can roll up their sleeves and lend expertise where needed. He says he’s used his experience to craft e-mails to potential sponsors. He’s even lugged boxes of merchandise down to the boutique. “I never could have played this role at a major club,” he says.
By night’s end, it was time for drinks and karaoke at the Dubliner, in the Tivoli Gardens area of Copenhagen, where versions of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” were sung. Investors, by now, knew each other well enough to argue over their preferred starting lineups. O’Donovan’s son, Finn, who’d joined the group from Rome, where he’s studying abroad for the semester, nodded in agreement with Dad while also watching the men’s N.C.A.A. Final Four game between Auburn and Florida on his phone.
A Slam Dunk?
For the owners of A.B., all this kerfuffle is mostly for fun. Others take it much more seriously. When Reynolds and McElhenney purchased Wrexham in 2021, they not only injected new life and cash into the North Wales club, they also produced a Hard Knocks–style series documenting their adventure called Welcome to Wrexham, on Hulu.
The gambit seems to have paid off. Wrexham recently secured promotion to the Championship league next season, which is one division below the Premier League. Before its promotion, Reuters had reported the Wrexham club owed its Hollywood investors close to $11 million. Now it seems the two have been paid back following a $38 million equity raise.
Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran recently took a minority stake in his hometown club, Ipswich Town. He will have long-term use of the owner’s box, but, unlike Reynolds and McElhenny, he will not be actively managing the club. Just this week, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian invested more than $26 million for a 10 percent stake in Chelsea Women. Expect to see him in the stands with his wife, tennis champion Serena Williams.
Lyttleton says A.B.’s ultimate goal of playing in the Superliga (the top-tier league in Denmark) is still within reach, but he preaches prudence. “We are protecting the future of the club by not going into debt,” he says. “We are building stability across all areas of the organization. There is a right way to do that.”
One need not look too far to see the wrong way to do it. Jammerbugt, another Danish club, was bought by a German investor in 2021, soon declared bankruptcy, and in 2022 was demoted to the sixth tier. Esbjerg was recently seized in bankruptcy court from its American owners and returned to the locals.
Despite Wrexham’s success, a recent article in The New York Times reported that investing in a lower-level club is not as much of a slam dunk as one might think, considering the costs, the competition, and the fickle nature of on-field performance.
“Think about how much fun you have following your Apple stock on a daily or weekly basis,” says Joe Gordon, an investor and A.B. board member who founded a consortium to bring in investors. “Compare that to following an international football club that’s playing live games and the joy and pain that goes along with a rooting interest, not to mention making great friends. You’re signing up for something different.”
Some have placed Wrexham’s current value at upward of $200 million. Considering Reynolds and McElhenney bought the team for $2.6 million in 2021, the valuation would mean a 7,400 percent increase in their investment.
Lyttleton and Gordon are often contacted by investors still looking to jump in. Just last week, A.B. announced a new investment entity had come aboard and was acquiring a minority 25 percent share of the club. The cash infusion will give the team more runway in improving business operations and increasing educational outreach programs to the local community over the next few seasons.
On the eve of the early-April match, Vice President J. D. Vance had made an unsolicited trip to Greenland with his wife, Usha, following President Trump’s announcement that he wanted to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory. Protests in the capital, Nuuk, had sprung up in early March, with some locals waving Yankee Go Home banners.
Has A.B.’s ownership suffered any blowback?
“The locals don’t see Donald Trump owning the club,” says Reinhardt. “They see whatever’s happening on the world stage as a temporary thing, and considering A.B.’s been here since 1889, what’s three more years?”
“We never wanted to come in as the American out-of-town buyers like some of these other clubs,” says investor Dan Morrison, a strategic communications and public-affairs consultant from Washington, D.C. “We’ve always wanted to be culturally sensitive and not look like the guys who are going to strip the thing down to the studs.”
During the season, many in Gordon’s group gather at Mugs Ale House, in Brooklyn, sometimes as early as eight a.m. on Saturdays, to watch A.B. play. Coffee (or beer) is served, the A.B. banner goes up, and investors with yawning families cheer while the match is patched in from a Danish online provider. Around the same time, the A.B. WhatsApp group chat fires up. More than 100 participants chime in from around the world.
Meanwhile, back in April after the match, investors took over the top floor of a restaurant located on the water in the Christianshavn neighborhood. Over cocktails, still wearing their green-and-white scarves and sweaters with pride, they sat around the tables, talking soccer but not much politics.
Morrison was seated with his son, Sam, a high-school junior. The two were piggybacking on the weekend to visit colleges in Europe, including Copenhagen Business School.
“I told Sam, ‘Life is all about moments,’” says Morrison. “And that’s what I feel we’re doing with A.B. It’s about the love of the game, being part of an improbable journey, being stewards for a club that will be here long after we’re gone, and a willingness to seize the moment.”
John von Sothen is a Paris-based writer, a frequent contributor to AIR MAIL, and the author of Monsieur Mediocre
