Talk about crowd sourcing. Fans’ community website MyFootballClub has agreed a deal to take over Blue Square Premier outfit Ebbsfleet United. The 20,000 MyFootballClub members have each paid £35 to provide the £700,000 necessary for the takeover and will all own an equal share in the club, be able to vote on transfers, player selection and major decisions. Ebbsfleet chairman Jason Botley told the BBC “We are united in believing this is a great opportunity.” What we need next is a text messaging system so that the fans can control which players are put on or taken off during the game…
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Mike Butcher
on
November 13, 2007
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Football2.0
This is an interesting trend that the ‘Net makes easier.
Fwiw there is emerging evidence that “we the People” prefer social enterprises to for-profits for more personal areas of our lives (eg healthcare) – this will have an impact on future online business models
People power wins the day. I think this has been a fantastic success….so far. However, I wonder if group decision making on transfers, team selection etc will be the best way forward for the club.
In any case I wish them the best.
- they’ll never make it
- Where is Ebbsfleet anyway!
- You can’t do much with 700K in football.
- I feel sorry for the players (20,000 captains! Good grief)
Fantastic idea. The text messaging idea could also provide an additional revenue stream for the club. If 25% of those 20,000 people text in each match at a price of £1 per message (pretty cheap compared to most text in services) that’ll mean a massive addition to the money the club takes for tickets and merchandise.
Love the idea. Awesome.
@jon – then do it.
I am one of the proud owners of Ebsfleet United as I loved the idea when I first heard about it. Web 2.0 football for the masses. I think it can be a success – isn’t there “wisdom of crowds” (Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few – James Surowiecki ) being applied to this?