diff --git a/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md b/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..02e6fca70c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/twenty-laws-tie.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+'@backstage/plugin-catalog-backend': patch
+---
+
+Updated condition in `resolveCodeOwner` to fix a bug where `normalizeCodeOwner` could potentially be called with an invalid argument causing an error in `CodeOwnersProcessor`
diff --git a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.test.ts b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.test.ts
index f9cdf79530..722d27fdb9 100644
--- a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.test.ts
+++ b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.test.ts
@@ -46,6 +46,14 @@ describe('resolveCodeOwner', () => {
       ),
     ).toBe('team-foo');
   });
+  it('should return undefined if the codeowners file contains no names', () => {
+    expect(
+      resolveCodeOwner(
+        `*`,
+        'https://github.com/acme/repo/tree/docs/catalog-info.yaml',
+      ),
+    ).toBe(undefined);
+  });
 });
 
 describe('normalizeCodeOwner', () => {
diff --git a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
index 675f6542aa..b0c44a8797 100644
--- a/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
+++ b/plugins/catalog-backend/src/processors/codeowners/resolve.ts
@@ -30,7 +30,9 @@ export function resolveCodeOwner(
   const { filepath } = parseGitUrl(catalogInfoFileUrl);
   const match = codeowners.matchFile(filepath, codeOwnerEntries);
 
-  return match ? normalizeCodeOwner(match.owners[0]) : undefined;
+  return match?.owners?.length
+    ? normalizeCodeOwner(match.owners[0])
+    : undefined;
 }
 
 export function normalizeCodeOwner(owner: string) {