Most businessmen are easy to summarise in one line. Eliran Ovad takes three.

He is the founder of Iconic Global, a Tel Aviv real estate investment and development company with active projects in Beer Sheva and Rishon LeZion. He is the owner and club president of Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv FC, one of Israel's oldest football clubs. And he invests across digital education, marketing technology and data infrastructure.

Written out like that it looks scattered. Spend any time with how the three are actually run and the opposite is true. They are the same idea applied to three different kinds of asset.

Iconic Global is the largest part of the picture and the easiest to measure. The firm has developed more than 23,000 square metres across Israel and has served more than 1,000 residents.

Its two projects say a lot about how the company chooses. In Beer Sheva, a former assisted living facility became Ganei Yalim, 204 residential units with communal areas, a rooftop terrace and full parking, occupied since 2023. In Rishon LeZion, a four-floor former Bezeq compound of roughly 8,000 square metres next to the HaZahav Mall is being redeveloped for mixed use, with signed agreements in place with established Israeli national retail brands.

Neither started as empty land. Both were buildings whose first life had ended in places that still worked.

The method is consistent enough to describe in a sentence. Acquire well-located assets, understand the catchment before committing to a use, and keep the building.

Iconic Global holds acquisition, development and long-term asset management inside one company rather than passing a project along a chain. That means the party specifying a building during construction is the party operating it a decade later.

"You specify differently when you know you will still own it," Ovad said. "The decision and the consequence stay in the same place."

Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv came under his ownership in November 2024. The club was founded in the HaTikva neighbourhood of south Tel Aviv, and its identity has never left it.

The first major project was rebuilding the youth academy from the ground up, which is the least visible investment available to a club owner and the one with the longest payback. The club also expanded its community work across south Tel Aviv, and received the President's Award for social contribution in both 2024 and 2025.

It is the clearest statement of the pattern. A football club is an asset nobody buys expecting a quick return, and he did not.

Outside property and sport, Ovad's investment activity covers digital education, marketing technology and data infrastructure.

Different asset class, same posture. He looks for businesses his team can help operate rather than only fund, that would still be worth owning if they could not be sold for a decade, and whose operating data supports the story being told about them.

The sectors change. The questions do not.

What connects a residential complex in Beer Sheva, a retail redevelopment in Rishon LeZion, a football club in south Tel Aviv and a set of technology investments is not the industry. It is the intention to keep them.

That is a slower way to build a business than the alternative, and it produces a different kind of company. One measured by what is still standing and still full, rather than by what was sold and when.

About Eliran Ovad: Eliran Ovad is a Tel Aviv-based entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of Iconic Global, a real estate investment and development company with active projects in Beer Sheva and Rishon LeZion, and the owner and club president of Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv FC. His investment activity also covers digital education, marketing technology and data infrastructure. More at iconic-global.io.