Exclusive | Cadiz minority owner Ben Harburg tells all to GSFN | OneFootball

At 41 years of age, Ben Harburg has enjoyed quite the globe-trotting life. Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Harburg spent his childhood bouncing around from places like Michigan, Egypt and Switzerland, but it was in El Puerto de Santa María, Spain, where he fell in love with football after attending a Cádiz match in 1997. Little did he know it, but he’d soon become one of the most important decision-makers at Cádiz.

“I guess you could say I grew up a bit nomadic,” stated Harburg in an exclusive Get Spanish Football News interview. “I lived in, I think, 12 places before I went to college, and that moving around was really influential in my life, both in terms of getting involved in football and also the way I deal with business. I think that moving around was really influential in my life, because it taught me how to be really adaptable and malleable. I don’t know if I have power or influence right now, but I’m definitely doing something I love, so that part of it has been wonderful. When I was 13, I went on this trip with my parents and brother and sister and chose to go to Egypt with my mom. They were serving us food like club sandwiches and fish and chips, trying to appeal to our Western palates, but by Day Three, I said ‘I don’t want this.’ I want to eat what the guides are eating, and so I started eating shawarmas, hummus, and tabbouleh.”

“I think that that kind of interest in just diving into the culture and being kind of highly localized has served me well, because now, when I’m in Saudi Arabia and we’re invited to someone’s home, there’s food laid out, there’s a feast with a baby camel there, and all kinds of things. Some of the people who are with me who are not accustomed to it are a little bit intimidated, but for me, I kind of just dive in. It’s really lovely for me to dip in and out of all these different cultures. I can easily adapt to them, so it certainly has played a role in what I’ve done on the football side.”

Harburg made a name for himself in the investment world, bouncing around from Germany to the United Arab Emirates to China and enjoying widespread success as a Managing Partner at MSA Capital, a global investment firm with over $2 billion in assets. After watching the Netflix series Sunderland ‘Til I Die, Harburg decided that he needed to commence a journey in football ownership – and he wanted no other place than Spain. After plotting out all 80 teams in Spain’s top three divisions and poring through different factors like GDP, true value, population and more, he found that Cádiz was the best value-for-money option. It’s why, in October 2021, Harburg purchased a 6.5% stake at the club and became an advisor to the board.

“I fell in love with football in Spain, and the team that I ended up acquiring in Spain, Cádiz, was our hometown team. I think for anyone, that’s your kind of dream, to either play for your hometown team or own it. For me to be able to have a piece of that was really special, and especially when I was living in Spain at the time, the club was only in the third tier of Spanish football, Segunda División B.”

“For us to be able to take it to the heights of LaLiga and beat teams like Real Madrid as well as Barcelona with a prime Lionel Messi on the field, it was really a dream come true. We’ll continue that story. That story is not over. Our luck ran out after four years in the top division, but we are finding our way to get right back there this season.”

Over the past four years, Harburg has helped Cádiz take massive strides in their globalization and digitization department, setting up their esports team and international social media teams and taking them from less than 500,000 followers on social media to over 18 million. With Harburg providing his valuable experience, he’s helped Cádiz monetize their business and become financially sustainable, and he’s also helped them set up their international academy. Today, however, Harburg has not one, but two clubs, after purchasing 100% of Al-Kholood Club on July 24, 2025. In doing so, he became the first foreign owner in the history of Saudi football.

“LaLiga definitely has better parity than Saudi Arabia in terms of quality of play across the different clubs in the first division, but we have some somewhat similar spending gaps. There were times when, at Cádiz, we’d have a €45-50 million payroll and would be competing against a Real Madrid that was spending somewhere between €680-850 million per season. I always joked that the differential between our spending levels made what you saw in the Moneyball movie look like nothing. The Oakland A’s had a $30 million payroll, and they were competing against the Yankees, who were three times that. I’m used to doing a lot with a little, and so what we did at Cádiz is no different than what we do at Al-Kholdood. We have to use innovative scouting techniques and identify talent that other people miss. We have to develop a world-class academy and build our own players rather than buy them, because we just can’t afford to buy, and we’ve got to be able to sell players as well into those big boys to become financially viable.

“We’ve got to run our club in a way that’s at the top tier of global standards. A lot of clubs in Saudi Arabia, while they pay you a very high salary, maybe they pay you late. The infrastructure is still quite rough, the quality of the coaching, and the quality of just overall experience is very middle to low tier. We’re the club where you come in and just see things are run differently. The paychecks come on time, the facility is first-rate, the quality of the coaching staff is as good as you would see anywhere in the world. We have to kind of win with process excellence and systemic excellence, and not just overpaying on salary, and there’s room for that. There’s room for clubs that can compete by doing things in a sustainable, efficient way, and not overspending. So the value for us, and the amount of money we spend to win a point on the standings is much lower than what our competitors pay for it, and so we can still compete. Money doesn’t always win, as you know in any sport.”

GSFN | Zach Lowy