Web 2.0 masses tackle English Football ownership

My Football Club – Own the club and pick the team

My Football Club is an online effort to sign-up 50,000 soccer (oops, I mean football) fans with the aims of buying an English football club.

When you sign up on the website for free, you will be asked to vote for the club that the group should attempt to purchase. After 50,000 people sign-up, everyone will be asked to pay £35 each (for a total of £1,375,000), and the organizers will start negotiations with the club at the top of the list.
Instead of having a manager, all decisions will be made by the 50,000 owners online, including the selection of the head coach, player transfers, player selection, team strategy and more. Of course, £1,375,000 will not be able to purchase a top tier team, but it's hoped that within 5 years, the myfootballclub.co.uk team could get promoted to the Premiership.

This is a really unique idea in professional sports, and I’m sure a lot of people will be watching on both sides of the Atlantic. If it works, co-operative ownership could be used by community leaders to acquire and resurrect struggling local sports franchises.

I'll do the free sign up, and we’ll see what happens. It’s hard to imagine a League Two team with 50,000 attentive owner/fans not succeeding. Because of the attention, it's easy to imagine that the club would at least be able to attract much larger sponsors than its peers.

Today’s Link source: Springwise newsletter