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Posted
Apr 22 2008, 05:12 AM
Who hasn’t dreamed of being an owner of a sports team? All of us. And for the princely sum of £35 (approximately $75), you too can be the owner of Ebbsfleet United Football Club, an English team that was purchased by approximately 30,000 members of
MyFootballClub.co.uk, an innovative experiment in social networking being applied to sports club ownership.
I recently had the chance to speak with Will Brooks, a soccer journalist in the UK who is the creative mind and founder of
MyFootballClub.co.uk, and discovered what provided the impetus for him and a small team of friends and colleagues that developed this unique concept.
It’s been a fascinating experiment where the community purchased Ebbsfleet United FC, a lower league team in financial difficulty, who since the acquisition are now poised to play for a major trophy at the famed Wembley Stadium in London in early May. Mobilization of such a large community of like-minded individuals would clearly have not have been possible in the pre-internet days.
Will told me how he came up with the idea as a young fan of Fulham, one of the smaller London clubs, and how annoyed he used to get watching his team play and thinking that he could do better if only he had more power and authority within the club itself.
As a soccer journalist he was well aware of the passion and intensity that soccer fans around the world have when it comes to their clubs. After floating the idea on a website to interested fans, he finally plucked up the courage to ask for the money and was overwhelmed in the first 24-48 hours with payments to his PayPal account. The success of this experimentation in ownership has spawned multiple requests from around the world, from similar groups who are looking to purchase their clubs in their own countries, including here in the United States. In fact, my team, Liverpool FC, who are currently undergoing some turmoil in the boardroom with their ownership structure, also have numerous websites looking to try and mobilize their very passionate fan base to try to actually buy the club back for the fans.
Here are some excerpts from what was a fascinating conversation with Will:
ON OWNERSHIP:“People are obsessed with the idea of ownership, that’s what we’ve found. Almost more than picking the team, people love the idea of owning the team. But we do have huge challenges. The biggest thing is making people feel like each day they are making decisions and involved.”
ON GETTING TO WEMBLEY:“I followed Fulham since I was four years old, when I was playing with crayons and coloring books. I’ve been going every season and we never went to Wembley. So to have made it there is very surreal. It’s amazing what we went through, and when we won that game I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated quite like it. There was this release of enormous stress because it was so important to us. What a crucial win. It’s really very weird getting to Wembley and it’s even more work … but good work.”
ON COMING UP WITH THE IDEA:“It probably goes back to the mid 80s when I’d go to see Fulham and the team was really struggling for money. There was always the threat of property developers buying up this prime real estate on the River Thames, and I used to look at the 3,000 or 4,000 fans in the stadium and think they are clearly die-hard because they certainly weren’t serving up great fare on the pitch. I’d think to myself that if everyone put in 500 or 1,000 pounds, we could easily buy the club (Fulham). And everyone loved the club so much that they would.
“I’ve always thought that lots of people putting in a small amount of money was much more potent than one or two people putting in a large amount of money.
“I also think football fans are capable of making the right decisions and having good instinct on issues. I’ve always thought clubs should listen to fans more, from choosing design of kits and to choosing who the sponsors are.
“So there was a mix of all of those things that led us to Ebbsfleet, and of course the internet makes it all possible.”
ON GETTING STARTED:“The beauty of it was that I have a few friends who are good at making websites and so we launched a very simple website just to float the idea. For a couple of years I had approached various clubs about doing this. All the owners loved the idea but were scared a bit by it. So we thought we should just put the idea out there and gauge the interest, which was incredible. In three months, I think we had 50,000 views and once the money started coming in we had 500,000 pounds in 10 days. It was this amazing turnaround from clubs being scared to be involved with us to all of a sudden everyone wanted to be involved.
“I thought it was a good idea, or I wouldn’t have put up the website. But I didn’t realize how big it would get. Every day there were new press hits, new sponsorship opportunities.”
ON FANS PICKING THE ROSTER:“There’s this raging debate online right now going on, where some people don’t want anything to do with it, and some who say that’s why I signed up for it. There’s an ongoing heated debate on what level should owners have impact on the team.
“I think it’s healthy, especially when you look at the pressure that’s on a typical manager, for the fans to play a role. Is it right that all that pressure is on one person? I like the idea of consulting due process and we can strike the right balance. It might even make a manager’s job more secure. An average manager only lasts 16 months. I think that’s because people see them as either brilliant or rubbish. But I hope we can go in between and create a much more healthy environment.
“Football fans won’t rush to decisions, they’ll be sensible. People think it’s madness, but I think we’re seeing sensible choices.”
ON THE FINANCIAL STRUCTURE:“It’s a unique structure. More than about the football, this is the first ever website community takeover of a business. This could turn into other things. You could buy a theater. You could do this in lots of areas. We’re built on a trust structure. A trust is the vehicle through which we record the money.”
ON WHAT SCARES HIM:“The question will be how to retain people in year two. About seven percent have already signed up in year two and three. Every day we get 20-30 new people signing up, and if we’re in the news it’s more like 100.
“We haven’t had a lot of time to catch our breath and step aside and look at the big picture. We really want to focus on the next 3-4 months and get to a position where we’re in a good position to retain people.
“I try to remind people that the first year 35 pounds is helping to buy the club, but the second year’s 35 pounds will allow you to have a little more fun. That’s my biggest call to members to stay on. We have a busy six months ahead.”
ON EXPANSION:“I think I’ve had a request from someone in almost every football-playing country to please come do this for us. Rightly or wrongly, I’m not interesting in doing any franchising just yet. We want to make this one club huge, make this one club work. We’d like to see people jump at this one and make this one work. I’ve been so focused on getting this one to work, that I didn’t want to distract myself.”
ON PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE:“Maybe it’s short sighted of me, but I really want to see what happens in year two. I’d really love to see 30,000 happy members above anything else right now.”
In a world where sports, to many people nowadays, mean syringes or videotapes, outlandish salaries or boorish behavior, it is refreshing to see how one individual can bring together so many people who individually would have no opportunity to have an ownership interest in a professional sports club but together can live out their dreams of being in a position of influence with their team.
This endeavor by Will Brooks is a fascinating experiment that no doubt will spawn similar communities here in the United States.