Just a general question and hoping someone could answer my curiosity. Wondering why some countries have different standards for fans in their clubs and other don't.
Also wondering what it would take for Tottenham to have a Dortmund style ownership model.
I've always wondered the same about England...
Here in Portugal almost all clubs were created by a bunch of young guys who just wanted to play football with their friends, over 100 years ago. Football or others sports, most clubs have tons of sports. Most big clubs here have professional teams in more than one sport, like basketball, handball, volleyball, athletics, cycling, etc.
Those clubs were amateur non-profit associations, with a few paying members (initially just the founders, but later the fans could join), that controlled how the club was run, through general assemblies, votes, etc. There were no "owners", only members. If a founding member stopped paying the monthly fee, he would no longer be a member and would have no ownership rights over anything. The club could not be sold to anyone because no one owned it.
Then in the last 20-25 years new laws mandated that the professional football teams of those clubs become a corporate sub-entity of the clubs (so the original club is the "holding company"). That corporate entity does have private investors, shareholders and therefore owners, but the club still owns at least 50% of the shares (or something close to it). There's the Benfica sports company (just the football team) and the Benfica club (all the other sports, the brand, etc). So in the end the supporters still elect a club president and vote for important stuff, like club president, stadium naming rights, logo changes, membership fees, etc. It's more or less the same as Spain.
While in England it seems that football clubs were private for-profit business ventures from day 1, created and owned by some rich guy, who could do whatever he wanted, including selling the club to someone else. There were no members with equal rights, only customers. Am I wrong?