Chien Lee

Chien Lee is a Chinese-American entrepreneur, investor, and sports team owner. He has built a multi-club ownership model, owns multiple professional European football clubs and is a well-known investor in European football. Lee is the founder and Chairman of NewCity Capital, a private investment firm, co-owner of FC Thun, co-owner of K.V. Oostende, chairman and co-owner of Nancy, co-owner of Esbjerg fB, co-owner of FC Den Bosch, co-owner of 1. FC Kaiserslautern, co-owner of GKS Tychy FC former owner and Chairman of OGC Nice and co-founder of 7 Days Inn. The Financial Times stated that Lee has refined Moneyball and The Wall Street Journal called Lee's football journey "a Moneyball experiment in English soccer". Lee is the founder, chairman, and CEO of NewCity Capital, a private investment company, focused on the sport and hospitality industries. In August 1989, he founded Lee Holdings Company Inc., a US-based investment company focused on the acquisition of real estate assets. Later in 2005, Lee actively invested in the hospitality Industry, co-founding 7 Days Inn (NYSE: SVN), one of the largest budget hotel chains in China. In 2014, Lee invested in The Grand Ho Tram Strip in Vietnam, one of the region's largest integrated resorts. In 2016, Lee forayed into professional sports investment and acquired multiple European soccer clubs, building one of the largest portfolios in the world. As of April 2023, Lee has invested in 9 European football clubs. He has created an internal infrastructure and a management team who are able to operate businesses in multiple countries, each with its own unique culture, language, and operational differences. His multi-club ownership is acknowledged as a unique business model in the world's most popular sport. In a 2018 interview with Forbes, Lee stated that as a long-term investor in football, he would use a data approach to identify talents, focusing on young players on the sporting side, and balancing the budget on the business side.