One Sunday morning last month, several dozen American soccer fans gathered inside a Brooklyn bar to cheer on a middling, minor league club from Denmark.
Many arrived wearing the team’s Kelly-green gear and used the royal “we” to discuss the composition of the squad. As kickoff loomed, a statuette resembling the club’s avian mascot made its way around the room.
“Everyone’s rubbing the owl for good luck,” said Joe Gordon, a sales consultant from the Lower East Side, as he slipped through the crowd.
For the next two hours, the group whooped and cursed at the television screens. Shots and beers and traditional Danish pastries were consumed.
The scene felt inexplicable — a pack of Americans zealously rooting for a third-tier Scandinavian team — save for one key fact: They own it.
Some people splurge on beach vacations or handbags or bottle service. A year and a half ago, a group of roughly 140 people, many of them New Yorkers, pooled some cash to buy a struggling Danish soccer team called Akademisk Boldklub, also known as A.B. The club plays in an unassuming suburb of Copenhagen called Gladsaxe and only draws a couple hundred fans to its games.
