I Am Buying A Football Club In England

I am an avid fan of football (we call it soccer here in US) and have been a fan for as long as I remember. I follow European football especially the English Premier League. If you have watched any MLS games, think of the European football a few levels better.

Realistically, if you are reading this article, you are too poor to buy your own club. We can just forget about any professional league in US. If you don’t have close to $1 billion, you have no chance of owning a professional league in the US. The same can be said about top European football teams. The club I supported was purchased last year for over £200 million plus a further £200 million investment in infrastructure.

Must be nice to have that kind of money and buy a professional team. But fear no more, some folks out in England, My Football Club came out with a concept on how you can own your very own football team. They are pooling money from 50,000 people. That’s a whole lot of people. Everyone will contribute £35 membership fee of which £27.50 will go in Club Purchase Fund and £7.50 will go towards administration fee.

Every person will have a co-owner/manager title. The total money we will have in the beginning to buy a club is £1,375,000. That’s enough to buy a decent club in a lower division. Each co-owner will get to vote on things like player transfers and club business. So it’s technically a management by committee. Any club bought by us will automatically add 50,000 new fans to its fan-base. Not bad.

I am not sure whether it will work out in the long run but for the amount of money involved, hell yeah, I want to be a FOOTBALL owner. We (I have to use we here since I already feel like I am the owner ) have gotten coverage on the news including major news channel like BBC. EA Sports UK has also put its weight behind the idea. Dan Holman, EA SPORTS UK Marketing Manager, said, “MyFootballClub are seeking to make history by buying a football club on behalf of its members. It’s all about putting a club back in the hands of the fans, a cause widely approved in footballing circles and by us here at EA SPORTS.”

I registered my interest in the beginning of May 2007 and the ownership stands at 49,172 as of this writing. I am sure in 2 weeks we will get the 50,000th people on board. BTW, Leeds United is ranked at no 1 of the club we would like to purchase. For my money, I will steer clear from them because of its recent financial problems. This is exciting.