Here comes Fanchester United

Buying a football team used to be a rich man's game. Not any more
YOUNG football fans dream of playing for their favourite teams; older fans dream of buying them. For most people, however, a club is beyond their means, so they must indulge their managerial ambitions in other ways, such as fantasy-football games or computer simulations. But now Will Brooks, a British football journalist, has devised a novel scheme to allow fans to own and manage an English club for real.

Through his website, launched in April at myfootballclub.co.uk, Mr Brooks hopes to sign up at least 50,000 fans prepared to pledge £35 ($70) each. (So far he has signed up nearly 35,000.) The syndicate will then use at least £1.4m of its funds to target a team for a takeover bid. Mr Brooks stresses that this is a nonprofit venture for genuine fans who want to make a real difference to a club in need. Because the acquisition will not be financed by debt, there will be no interest payments, and since no money will be taken out as dividends, any profits can be reinvested. “The club should therefore be on a much more secure financial footing than the standard shareholder-ownership structure,” says Mr Brooks.

Leeds United is top of the fans' shopping list, according to votes cast online. Catastrophic financial mismanagement and spiralling debts lie behind the club's demotion from the top flight of English football to a division two tiers below in only five seasons. Last month the club said it could not even afford to pay the expenses of medical volunteers who attend its matches. But Leeds may not be the eventual takeover target. Mr Brooks has brought in Michael Fiddy, a lawyer and former managing director at Fulham, to make sure that the target club is in good financial order.

Once a club has been bought, every decision—from picking players for the squad to choosing tactics to identifying candidates for transfers—will be made by the syndicate's members. Instead of a manager the club will have a coach who will say what he thinks is best for the team; his proposals will then be put to an online vote. It may not be easy to find a coach willing to agree to these terms, but if the club is successful, the coach “will become well known and respected for having the courage to try something new,” says Mr Brooks. And if things go wrong? For once, the fans will not be able to blame the manager.
Jun 14th 2007 From The Economist