Turning fantasy football into reality
Updated on 25 July 2007
50,000 'managers', £35 each, one football club. A recipe for disaster? Not according to the man behind myfootballclub.co.uk, a firm believer in the 'wisdom of crowds'.
Amid a wave of high-profile football club buy outs this year, perhaps the most interesting is set to take its next step.
A website which has been seeking 50,000 fans to buy a football club is about to reach critical mass - within weeks it hopes to hit its £1.5m fundraising target.
Such is the success of the collectivisation plans, optimistic football club chairmen have already been trying to hawk their team to the new mass owners.
Will Brooks (pictured below, right), who set up the myfootballclub.co.uk website three months ago, said: "We've had owners from a Division Two club and a Conference side contacting us already - and there have been messages from others too."
Will Brooks, myfootballclub.co.uk
Brooks, a 36-year-old former copyright worker - who quit his job after the website took off - originally approached clubs with the idea of mass ownership.
"I spoke to two or three clubs, they thought it was a good idea but they were very nervous about it. I'd been boring my mates with this idea of collective ownership for years.
"As the final throw of the dice it was decided to try and get the people on board first - and then find a club. It seems to have worked."
The website launched on April 26 - and after appearing on the BBC things started to take off.
Fans are invited to pledge £35 a year to sign up to a trust. No payment is taken until the magical number of 50,000 fans is reached - but that is now imminent.
'I belive in the 'wisdom of the crowd'. If you look at the last World Cup the crowd knew that playing Rooney as a lone striker was not working - there was only one man that didn't think that.'Will Brooks, myfootballclub.co.uk
Fulham fan Brooks said: "At the moment we are getting about 300 people signing up a day - with registrations heading for the 48,000 mark."
Once the 50,000 target is hit, fans who have signed up will officially be asked to hand over their cash - and vote for which club they would like to see purchased.
Brooks said: "Obviously there could be a dip between the number of people that have signed up - and those that will actually pay, but if that's the case then we can just ask for more people to sign up.
"At the moment Leeds is top of the list for teams to be bought - but we'll be asking people to vote again when they pay."
Former Fulham managing director Michael Fiddy is in place to help handle the due diligence of actually buying a club.
Brooks said: "There are obviously lots of legal aspects that will need to be looked at when we decide which club to buy.
"But I'm assured when a club wants to sell - it doesn't take that long. Having a team by the start of the season might be pushing it; but you can be a club at any time."
Day-to-day decisions will be taken by club employees - but Brooks says major decisions such as managers, transfers and formations will be down to the 50,000-strong trust.
He said: "I belive in the 'wisdom of the crowd.' If you look at the last World Cup the crowd knew that playing Rooney as a lone striker was not working - there was only one man that didn't think that."
Theoretically the commercial benefits for the club that's being bought are obvious. They inherit 50,000 new fans; with the unique-selling point of it being a collective enterprise, the ultimate antidote to some of the big club brands.
Brooks cannot wait to just be one of the masses again.
He added: "I'll just be the same as everyone else when the sale goes through - I'm just the guy who set up the website. Everyone in the trust will be equal."
Given that it's often hard to get four football fans around a pub table to agree on anything, watching 50,000 coming to a joint decision might be quite a sight...
