image credit: Dead Air (Flickr)
The brainchild of an English soccer fan, myfootballclub.co.uk originally launched in 2007 with the aim of recruiting at least 50,000 soccer enthusiasts from around the world to donate £35 each to buy a real soccer team. The site collected the necessary amount of donations quite quickly, and in the beginning of 2008, the donors voted to buy a 75% share in Ebbsfleet United F.C.
Thus having gained control of the club, the members of MyFootballClub then began to run decisions on things from player transfers to team selection and even things like what type of food to serve at the stadium, through a democratic voting process conducted on the website. The members have also voted against taking certain things to public control. For example, last year the members voted to leave picking the starting lineup for matches to the team's head coach Liam Daish.
Not all have been happy with Ebbsfleet becoming the world's first fan-controlled soccer team and it is rumored that the team could be facing some financial trouble, but it's an interesting experiment and the team has also enjoyed some significant success after the members took over. The head coach says he's 100% committed to this concept. The current MyFootballClub members come from almost 80 different countries and EA Sports has also agreed to invest in the team.
If this can be done in sports, could, or rather should, it be done with companies, brands (some may say examples of that already exist) and everything else? Is this the next step towards ultimate democracy and a better world, or something to create chaos and instability? This kind of system could hardly be created and run without the help of Internet, at least not internationally. Is this the way we are ultimately going to be making decisions - before the digital age we just didn't have the tools to make this possible? What are your thoughts?
Thanks to Craig Ritchie for the link.
Karri Ojanen
The brainchild of an English soccer fan, myfootballclub.co.uk originally launched in 2007 with the aim of recruiting at least 50,000 soccer enthusiasts from around the world to donate £35 each to buy a real soccer team. The site collected the necessary amount of donations quite quickly, and in the beginning of 2008, the donors voted to buy a 75% share in Ebbsfleet United F.C.
Thus having gained control of the club, the members of MyFootballClub then began to run decisions on things from player transfers to team selection and even things like what type of food to serve at the stadium, through a democratic voting process conducted on the website. The members have also voted against taking certain things to public control. For example, last year the members voted to leave picking the starting lineup for matches to the team's head coach Liam Daish.
Not all have been happy with Ebbsfleet becoming the world's first fan-controlled soccer team and it is rumored that the team could be facing some financial trouble, but it's an interesting experiment and the team has also enjoyed some significant success after the members took over. The head coach says he's 100% committed to this concept. The current MyFootballClub members come from almost 80 different countries and EA Sports has also agreed to invest in the team.
If this can be done in sports, could, or rather should, it be done with companies, brands (some may say examples of that already exist) and everything else? Is this the next step towards ultimate democracy and a better world, or something to create chaos and instability? This kind of system could hardly be created and run without the help of Internet, at least not internationally. Is this the way we are ultimately going to be making decisions - before the digital age we just didn't have the tools to make this possible? What are your thoughts?
Thanks to Craig Ritchie for the link.
Karri Ojanen
Strategists & Planners
Comments (1)
This allready exists for companies, it's called Initial Public Offering.
Posted on March 13, 2009 03:01