My Football Club - nice idea, won’t work
My Football Club is an initiative to “give football back to the fans” by allowing them to buy a football club and become equal owners. Once (if) a club is purchased, you get an equal vote on team selections, transfers and kits / kit sponsors.
Fantastic idea in theory - the mere thought of fans having a voice in running the club makes me giddy - but in practice, it might not work.
At its core the idea relies on the majority of the fans making the right decisions. Perhaps I don’t understand the idea properly (I doubt that many of the people who signed up and pledged their 35 quid do either), but I shudder to think what would happen to Manchester United if the fans were in charge.
No, seriously - think about it. It’s NOT you in charge. It’s thousands of other people in charge as well. A whole community of fans, the majority of which are easily swayed by media propaganda.
As fans, we think with our hearts, not with our heads. We use our emotions, not our heads.
So while I think it’s a fantastic prospect (from a business point of view), it’s not viable as a long-term venture ‘for the club’.
Still, I’m open to correction on this one. What do you guys think?
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dont worry, david gill will fire there ass’es back home.
Bad idea in general. A Football Club is not a democracy. Need one strong manager who makes all the major/hard decisions with his other junior staff backing him up. Its always been that way and always should be. They’ve made football their life and obviously know what they’re doing, more so than what the thousands or so fans who just have a vocational interest in football.
Can you imagine just the people who write in to this website trying to come to an agreement on anything? Even the Man Utd fans can’t agree on who should be brought into the club and should be let go for next season.
Doubt it will work. Perhaps the fans can vote on one transfer in/out per season.
What about the idea of raising funds on soccerlens and together placing a bid for a club like Leeds?
Its all a scam.
Nice idea at first but as you have to RENEW each year, you never ACTUALLY own any part of the club, the website do. So effectively you are paying for a website to own a club which could later be sold at a profit (should the additional funds push the club in the right direction) and you wont see a penny and its cost the website nothing.
No thanks.
karl - well, tell you what, I’ll humour you on this
FC United anyone? 
I don’t think we’d raise enough money to buy leeds though.
elbubblo - I thought that through MFC you owned shares in the club?
pick a club Karl…
How about a Welsh club? No particular reasons other than i know a couple of them play in some of the lower English leagues & i’ve seen Cardiff City play & like some of their players.
Reckon some people would be interested in trying?
P.S. If in fact the fans would own shares in this club through the website, can you possibly imagine an annual shareholders meeting? Would have to book out the ‘new’ Wembley stadium for that. Aren’t one of the big stadiums in the UK located in Wales?
P.P.S. I’m not Welsh by the way.
But ultimately the club will be taken over by the website, you wont be at any shareholders meetings or have any such priviliges, you will just be a joe nobody along with 49,999 others pumping £35 a year to fund a healthy sale if the club progresses further.
If you contacted the club after the takeover, they would have NO record of who you were, just reference to the site.
This is all just a long term scam and many will fall for it!
If the club gets sold, would you see a penny of it? As a shareholder - yes. As someone signed up to a website, no.
elbubblo, I’m not on the website “scam” - like you call it. I personally don’t see how 1.75mil (35 * 50 000) can buy much of a club?
I am however interested in how a nobody (with no money) can own a football club like Leeds. Reason why I chose Leeds is because it shouldn’t take too long to get back into the Premiership and secondly, they have a huge and faithfull following. Anyone knows how much it would cost?
What about Wolverhampton?
Although the idea sounds pretty cool in principle i really don’t think that it would work with a well known club like leeds. the club has far too much history to risk its future with a new management style that has never been tried before. perhaps if the site were to try to go after a league 2 or a nationwide conference side than the stakes would not be so high. i just think their is too much money at stake in high level football for teams to be willing to try this.
I’m not a chauvinistic pig, but there will definitely be a trend towards male dominance in such a club, which will be followed by those females screaming for equal dominance(repeat i’m not a chauvinistic pig), which eventually be granted and which will finally culminate in 15 year old boys being brought in as star players because they are “Oh so cuuuuuuute” Mr.Billal picture it happening to your beloved United……..(repeat I’m not a …….you know the rest)
i just checked out the site, the thing that really got my interest was the potential scouting network the club could have with worldwide membership, however it would be quite expensive to have the qualified staff to follow up on any potential finds.
definately we think with our hearts, not our heads. e.g i was against the american takeover cos i beleived all that rubbish that was going around, but no im all for it! thats jst 1 thing. 2 be honest i’d probably ruin my club if i were in charge!!
Ahmed:
What you are suggesting is similar to what the Spanish clubs have. Real Madrid and Barcelona are owned by their fans, actually club members called “socio” .. The socio elect a president every 4 years, and the president appoints a board of directors.
In Real Madrid, the number of socio’s is limited to the number of seats in the Bernabue, which is about 80.000. In order for someone to become a socio, another socio has to latterly die, so the fixed number can be kept. There is a waiting time of about 10-15 years in order to actually become one. Real Madrid fans, sign up their kids when they are born so when they are about 15-20, they will be Real Madrid owners, so one day they will own 1/80.000 of Real Madrid.
So by doing it this way, Real Madrid, Barcelona and most of the other Spanish clubs can not be bought by companies or private people. The socios pay about €100 a year.
A TV station tried this in Australia a few years back. They formed a team in the suburban leagues (the Hammerheads?), and viewers called in to choose a name, appoint the coach and pick the players for each game. It was an interesting concept (and I think the team reached the finals in their first year), but it only lasted one season. I can’t remember why.
Redondo, this socio thing is interesting. Do the socios make any money of it?
True enough a football club cannot be a democracy.
Similarly we live in a capitalist world where greed is good.
There will always be a collective trying to get to the top.
Look at Barca who are effectively owned by the people. Still the rich/ famous get to the top of the tree & run the club how they see fit.
Democracy is a delusion. For years our so called democratic society is run based on division of labour, structure, and efficiency. Sure we can drink what we like we can talk to almost whoever we like but that is as far as it goes. When comes to decision making on collective bases, structure and hierarchy set in, and individuals become a pawn. As for majority of fans who think they are the one who make the right decision, I am afraid they do not have the necessary skills and expertise; these fans simply think they know it all, yet almost all of them have profession outside football industry. So the best these fans can expect and manage is to become share holder and voice their opinion in AGM with not much weight. This is because if hey do not like what they see, they simply can sell their shares and go somewhere else. Welcome to the world of capitalism
I think you’re confusing democracy with rule of law. Democracy, in the literal sense, is unworkable because people are idiots. Rule of law works because idiots like following laws. Athens was a democracy; all the citizens voted on every decision. It takes the wisdom of Solon and the political savvy of Pericles to make it work. Western governments, on the other hand, are rule of law (e.g. England’s a constituational monarchy) governments where the citizens can (peacefully) throw out the ruling party every three or four years.
Incidentially, Australian Rules sides are all member-owned, member-run. It’s democractic in some incidences (mergers, elections) and rule of law in others. One benefit of this system is that the administrators are all fans. And yes, you do get successful, professional people willing to give up substantial amounts of their time to run their football club.
In my mind, it seems repugnant that soccer clubs are mostly privately owned. How can you say you’re a member if you don’t have a say?
If everyone has an equal share in the club, £35 for 1 year? If you own a share you shouldn’t have to pay each year for it. So in effect the people paying won’t be share holders. Is this right?
I paid up my £35 a couple of days ago - just to see what will happen.
To answer some questions -
The £35 is divided into £27.50 which is paid to The MyFootballClub Trust which is registered with the Financial Services Authority as an Industrial and Provident Society, registration number 30275R. The IPS will own the club and each member will be a member of the IPS.
The other £7.50 is to pay for the running of the website, legal and administrative fees.
If the club is sold any profit will go to charity.
As regards how the whole thing will operate - the members will actually decide.
While the idea of each member voting on team selection, tactics etc. I am personally opposed to it and as the issue is being teased out on discussion boards many people are begining to realise that it may be impractical. Same with many other aspects.
I am personally interested in how the club will be structured and how the decision making process will operate. I am thinking more on the lines of a large form of supporters trust with the members having greater input.
The potential is huge. If 50,000 sign up then the club can have an extra £1.5million available. Extra people attending matches, extra merchandise and extra sponsorship.
I would actually agree that the greatest difficulty will be to keep things going for the second year.
As regards the impact on the club if the whole thing falls apart. I think many people realise the need not to see the extra money creating potential future problems for the club. Many people are talking about the need for a strict wage structure. My own suggestion is for a salary cap fixed at a certain percentage of gate receipts with the extra money being used purely for transfer and signing on fees and for developing infrastructure and the youth academy etc.
Will it work - I don’t know - but it is an interesting experiment. And if it does, it won’t half show a lot of the so-called ‘chairmen’ that fans are just as good at running a football club, if not better.
[…] moment of time. But what if it really was the ‘town’s club‘? Not to the extent of MyFootballClub (which sounds horrendous by the way), but if we had some say in who played, and where, and for how […]
Load of rubbish. You’re getting one vote out of 50k members, that’s hardly ‘having a say in the running of a club’.
You want to have a say in the running of your club, join the Supporters Trust. Sure, it may cost more but anyone really interested will hold far more power to affect the decisions of their club than one person out of 50k (or more if the site is to be believed)
As for the actual buying of the club itself, this doesn’t seem like it will work out too work. What if, say you’re a Manchester United supporter (as seems to be the large trend on here) and MyFootballClub.co.uk buys Leeds? You cannot magically generate support for a club that you had little or no knowledge prior, and in the case of Leeds w/ the rivalry they have it is hard to ’support’ a club that you’re supposed to hate.
As a final word, taken from the website:
“Why £35?”
To make it affordable for as many people as possible. It’s less than most Premiership tickets, and also less than a new football manager computer game.
Meh. I’d rather buy FM08, would be a lot more ‘fun’
Absolute disaster waiting to happen.
Think of the things some fans say - I heard a Utd fan ring in to 6-0-6 after 3 or 4 games this season saying he thought Alex Ferguson was a limited manager and needed to be replaced.
This person could be partially in charge of your football club. Terrible.
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