This article provides an understanding of the organization of Danish club football, including both grassroots and professional activities. We do this by analysing how it has developed and how it relates to four basic social orders viewed as ideal types; civil society, market, state and associations. Our study is grounded in document analysis, a questionnaire survey and existing knowledge of sports clubs and, in particular, football clubs. Our findings show how Danish football is a game that operates between these social orders. We highlight four unique traits: firstly, the existence of an overall formal, bureaucratic, non-profit, rather autonomous associative decentral democratic structure; secondly, a high number of non-profit, democratically organized grassroots clubs of different sizes spread around the country; thirdly, late professionalism; and fourthly, the creation of a certain business model of professional Danish football. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.