Top 10 colourful team owners in sport

They are the moneymen who leave the fans wondering where it all went - or is about to go - wrong. Chris Rattue looks at the most interesting team owners in world sport.

1 Michael Knighton

Turned mighty Manchester United into a figure of fun, very briefly, in the late 1980s when he tried to buy the club using money he didn't have. With the takeover accepted, Knighton was presented to fans before a match against Arsenal, where he displayed his soccer skills. Those tricks were nothing compared to the real one he almost pulled off. Knighton nearly scored Manchester United for a mere £20 million, which isn't much more than what striker Wayne Rooney now earns in a year. Knighton's grand plans were ahead of his time, but his backers pulled out and he was left high and dry. He did buy Carlisle United where he became a meddling and unpopular owner who lost control of the club. Knighton also claims to have seen a UFO. Manchester United had a lucky escape.

2 Eric Watson

The Auckland Warriors majority owner is hard to find at the best of times, which these ain't for the man who was the club's white knight. Watson's image took a hit when Hanover Finance failed. His lavish lifestyle, usually conducted overseas, is at odds with the fate of his poor investors, some of whom may sit in the stands at Mt Smart. Yet the Watson mystique still holds and the fall-out hasn't landed as a big sticky mess in the middle of Mt Smart Stadium ... yet. Unlike his fellow financier and Warriors owner Mark Hotchin, Watson has quit as a club director although in layers of companies, he figures prominently in three-quarters of the ownership. The Warriors chairman Mark Flay claimed it was "business as usual" after Hotchin's assets were frozen. League supporters will hope this was simply a poor choice of words.

3 George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks

A Liverpool soccer club famous for its boot room has become infamous for bad board room performances. The best thing that can be said about the Americans' ownership of the club is that they were preferable to a previous bidder, the former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (this isn't saying much). The fans didn't like the debt-shuffling Gillett and Hicks and as it turned out, Gillett and Hicks didn't even like each other. The promising new owner has already revived the Boston Red Sox baseball club. But as a call for player loyalty at Anfield went out, moody striker Fernando Torres scarpered to Chelsea for the money. Sadly, the rot runs deep, and Gillett and Hicks only added to it.

4 Thaksin Shinawatra

The less said about this dude the better. He owned English Premier League club Manchester City for a year and sold at a nice profit. The former Thai Prime Minister's fans don't include Amnesty International, and he has more passports than the Jackal. A long charge sheet awaits the serial looter in Thailand, and Manchester City are more likely to win the Premier League than he is to return home.

5 Sir Michael Fay

A government adviser and big winner out of Rogernomics, Fay gave loose change back by dipping our toes into the America's Cup waters with a couple of riotous challenges. Oh what fun. Fay and his lower-profile offsider David Richwhite played poacher and gamekeeper in the privatisation process although the New Zealand they helped create was not to their liking - they moved to Switzerland. A keen reader of fine print, and with no fear of courtroom battles, Fay laid the foundation for what became our successful bid to win the America's Cup, a dream fulfilled by the late Peter Blake and Russell Coutts. Fay's cherubic-faced bravado won over a sporting nation at the time, but history's eye and the Securities Commission have been much less impressed.

6 The Augusta National Golf Club and its chairman

Among the most powerful people in sport, the chairman has absolute power in running this remarkable club which owns the season's first major golf event. Augusta is the world's most famous course. The Masters is arguably the world's most prestigious tournament, an invite-only major on a beautifully manicured and challenging course. Set up in the 1930s for rich and powerful white men, the club admitted its first black member in 1990, and has yet to find a female member. This is a private club. And their previous chairman, Hootie Johnson, is regarded as a progressive figure outside of this archaic institution. There is even something endearing in the way Augusta refuses to bow to corporate pressure. Forget the technicalities though, because what Augusta has appeared to stand for - privilege and segregation - is not nearly as pretty as its golf course.

7 George Steinbrenner

His CV includes making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's presidential campaign and being pardoned by Ronald Reagan. It's hard to know which is worse. The long-time New York Yankees baseball owner paid extraordinary amounts to his players. He hired and fired with glee, would dis his own players, and ran a dirty tricks campaign against one player that would have made "Tricky Dicky" Nixon proud. Steinbrenner added to the Yankees' aura and success though. A man with extraordinary front, Steinbrenner's image was given a slightly cute makeover by back-only views of his character in the Seinfeld comedy series.

8 Marge Schott

Inherited great wealth but displayed poor judgment. Schott was the first woman to buy a major league baseball team - the Cincinnati Reds. She was a Hitler apologist and racist who said she felt "cheated" when a game was postponed after an umpire died on the diamond. One of the most difficult assignments in sport is seeking Schott's redeeming features.

9 Allen Stanford

The Texas-born shyster-slash-banker offered staggering winner-take-all prizes for cricket matches between England and the West Indies. The English cricket bosses displayed amazing speed when Stanford was charged with fraud involving billions of dollars. The first American to be knighted by the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, he was thus the first to be stripped of the title as well.

10 Robert Maxwell

Maxwell was the mysterious and charismatic owner of England's Mirror media group. This oversized character rescued the soccer clubs Oxford United and Derby County. Cap'n Bob came to an unfortunate end in the Atlantic Ocean, after which it was found he was a premier division fraudster whose crimes included dipping into the Mirror pension funds.