How the data is made

Name: Clubs DB
Creator: Mass Rising

Clubs DB is a sourced database of football clubs. Every club, holding and transaction names the documents it rests on, and every page says how sure we are.

2,697 clubs, 1,242 current holdings and 13,620 sources. Last updated 7 October 2026.

A club is not a company

The team fans follow is fielded by a legal entity, and that entity is often not the club its members founded. In Portugal many clubs field their team through a SAD, a company in which the founding club may keep only a minority. In Spain most professional clubs are SADs, while most lower-division clubs are members’ associations with no shareholders at all. In Italy amateur clubs are often associations (ASD) or non-profit companies (SSD).

So for every club Clubs DB records which entity fields the team, then who holds that entity’s shares, and so on up the chain until it reaches a person, a family, a fund, a state or the members themselves.

What “controls” means

Owned by its members. The members' association fields the team, or controls the company that does.
Held by a club foundation. A non-profit foundation set up for the club, such as a Dutch stichting, fields the team or controls the company that does. It has no shareholders of its own.
Private owner. A person, family, company or fund controls the club.
No controlling shareholder. The club is a company, but no single shareholder controls it.
Listed on a stock exchange. Shares trade on a public market and no holder has control.
Controlled by a public body. A municipality or another public body controls the club.
Reserve side. The second team of another club, which owns it.
Not yet established. We have not yet found a public source for who controls this club.

A club belongs to a multi-club group when one of the group’s companies holds shares in it, directly or through a company it controls. Minority stakes count, and each club’s page says which kind of stake it is.

Who owns a club: members to investors

The globe, the league bars and every table place each club on one line, from a club its members own outright to one investors own outright. The members’ side is the club’s own body (its members’ association, a supporters’ trust or a club foundation) or a company that body controls. A dot is filled in the colour of the side in control and ringed in the other side’s colour when that side holds a stake too. “Owned by investors” means no stake of the members’ side is on record, not that one is proven not to exist.

Owned by its members. The members' association (or a supporters' trust or club foundation) fields the team, or owns the company that does, with no outside investor on record.
Members in control, investors hold a stake. The members' side keeps control, and outside investors hold part of the company that fields the team.
Investor in control, the club keeps a stake. A private owner controls the company that fields the team, and the members' club still holds shares in it.
Owned by investors. A person, family, company or fund controls the club, and no stake of a members' club is on record.
Owned by a multi-club group. Controlled by an owner that holds other clubs too.
Company, owner not identified. A company with shareholders fields the team, so it is not owned by its members, but public sources do not say who holds the shares.
Owned by a city or state. A city council, region or state body controls it.
No single controlling owner. Listed or widely held, or several large holders with none in control.
Not yet established. Public sources researched so far do not establish who owns it.

Where the owner is from

The globe’s “From where” layer answers the second question: for a club an investor controls, whether that owner is based in the club’s country or abroad. It compares where the owner at the top of the chain is based with the club’s country; when owners share control, each is counted, and a club with any partner abroad counts as owned from abroad.

Owner from the same country. A private owner based in the club's country controls it.
Owner from abroad. A private owner based abroad controls it, alone or sharing control with partners.

Where the facts come from

In order of how much weight they carry: company registries and official gazettes; regulators and stock exchanges; federations and leagues (including the Portuguese federation’s annual report of qualifying holdings in sports companies); the club’s or owner’s own statements; national and local news; specialist databases; and Wikipedia and Wikidata, which we use for names, founding years, grounds and coordinates but never as the only source for who owns a club.

High confidence An official record, the club's or owner's own statement, or several reliable reports that agree.
Medium confidence One reliable report, or an official record old enough that this may have changed.
Low confidence A single secondary source, or a structure that is not clear. Shown, and labelled.

When something cannot be established from public sources, the club’s page says so under “Not yet established”. An unknown is never shown as a fact, and a missing figure is never shown as zero.

Corrections

Every club, owner and group page has a form for corrections. A correction does not change Clubs DB by itself: we check it against the sources, and if it holds up the record changes with a citation. A link to a registry record, a club statement or a news report makes a correction much quicker to confirm.

Who makes it

Clubs DB is built by Mass Rising, which invests in and runs lower-division European clubs. That makes it an owner in the data it publishes, so it is listed exactly like every other group: Mass Rising’s entry shows its holding and its sources, and nothing about any other owner is withheld or softened.