Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C.: The Canadian-Owned Champion at the Center of Israeli Football's Boycott Era
Israel's most-decorated football club — 24 championships. Since 2009 controlled by Mitchell Goldhar, the Canadian real-estate billionaire behind SmartCentres REIT. The Ajax-Amsterdam November 2024 fixture reset the club's commercial equation.
Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. is the most-decorated football club in Israeli history — 24 Israeli championships and counting. Since 2009 it has been controlled by Mitchell Goldhar, the Canadian real-estate billionaire behind SmartCentres REIT — a Wal-Mart-anchored shopping-centre platform worth over CAD $10 billion in gross asset value. The Goldhar era has been the most sustained financial and sporting stability the club has seen in its post-1990s history.
Ownership
- Owner: Mitchell Goldhar (via Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club Ltd.). Acquired 2009. Distant relative of the Reichmann family — the same Canadian-Jewish industrial fortune that built Olympia & York.
- Founder-owner posture. Goldhar does not sell. Repeated approaches — including reported interest from foreign consortia in the 2018–2022 window — have been rejected.
Sporting record under Goldhar
- Championships in the Goldhar era: seven league titles across the last dozen seasons — the longest sustained dominance of any Israeli club in the professional era.
- European campaigns: regular Europa League and Europa Conference League group-stage appearances. Champions League qualifying rounds most seasons.
- Player exports: Manor Solomon, Eran Zahavi, Omer Atzili, Dor Peretz, Dor Turgeman — the modern spine of the Israeli national team has passed through Bloomfield.
The boycott era
The post-October 7 period redefined the club's operating environment. Israeli clubs cannot host UEFA matches inside Israel under current security conditions. Maccabi Tel Aviv has played designated "home" fixtures across Serbia, Hungary, and other neutral venues.
The November 2024 Ajax match in Amsterdam — and the antisemitic attacks on Maccabi supporters that followed — turned a club fixture into a global news event. The commercial consequences are still being priced in: away-fixture logistics, security cost inflation, insurance rewrites, sponsorship reactivity.
Commercial structure
- Home stadium: Bloomfield Stadium, Jaffa. Shared with Hapoel Tel Aviv and Bnei Yehuda. Renovated capacity ~29,400.
- Media rights: distributed through Israeli Premier League Ltd. Sport 5 / Charlton hold the primary broadcast contract.
- Estimated annual revenue: low- to mid-tens of millions of USD — small by European mid-table standards, dominant by Israeli standards.
The takeaway. Maccabi Tel Aviv is the closest thing Israeli football has to a permanent institution. Its owner is a foreign billionaire who runs the club as a legacy holding, not a trading position. In the boycott era, that patience matters more than the trophy count.
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