MyFootballClub
MyFootballClub was an English Industrial and Provident Society that sought, starting in August 2007, to recruit at least 50,000 football enthusiasts from across the world to purchase an English association football club. MyFootballClub's premise is to allow its paid members to control the club through a democratic voting process conducted over the internet. Member voting includes matters both on the pitch, such as team selection and player transfers, and off the field, like what type of food to serve at the stadium.
From 2008 to 2013, MyFootballClub owned 75% of Ebbsfleet United F.C. With its purchase of a majority share of Ebbsfleet United, MyFootballClub became the first online community to fully run a professional sports club in history.
The society was closed in 2023.
Background
MyFC was engineered by former football journalist Will Brooks. Brooks initially estimated MyFC's purchase fund at £1,375,000 if 50,000 people were to sign up as members. All members have voting rights on certain decisions in the club purchased by MyFC and they will collectively manage that club, by making many of the decisions usually made by the manager and others, through a voting system on the MyFootballClub website. However, they do not actually hold any shares. The watershed figure of 50,000 registrations expressing interest in participation was passed on 31 July 2007, with a total of 53,051 registrations completed at that time. At that point, MyFC began collecting payments from those who had registered as well as any new people who signed up subsequently, opening what MyFootballClub described as "phase 2". Paid-up members would participate in a non-binding vote on takeover preference, with Leeds United initially leading the member voting, followed by Cambridge United and Nottingham Forest.Brooks had said that the club purchased would likely be playing in Football League Two or the Conference National, and MyFootballClub's managers had opened talks with a number of clubs from those leagues. Negotiations between MyFC and various football clubs remained secret during this period due to the confidential nature of the purchase discussions and because of the number of different clubs involved. Also around this time, EA Sports, the sports simulation video games division of Electronic Arts, agreed to a deal with MyFootballClub that "will be supporting us with a significant investment" to boost the group's football club purchasing fund.
On 6 August 2007 it was revealed that four clubs had approached MyFootballClub about the possibility of a sale. Shortly thereafter, The Independent reported that MyFootballClub had raised approximately £500,000 in the first 20 days it had been collecting funds from members to purchase a football club. On 3 September 2007 it was reported that Halifax Town had approached MyFootballClub in an attempt to save the football club from a winding-up order over unpaid taxes. In May 2008, it became public that the other two clubs besides Ebbsfleet United that MyFC had come closest to purchasing were League Two's Mansfield Town and Leigh RMI, then of the Conference North.
Ebbsfleet United
On 13 November 2007, MyFootballClub announced that it had agreed in principle to purchase Conference National club Ebbsfleet United, which had been known as Gravesend & Northfleet F.C. until early in 2007. Ebbsfleet United was chosen out of the nine football clubs that approached MyFC about a possible purchase. A process of due diligence was entered into, with "lawyers and the accountants...looking through the books and the accounts to make sure there are no skeletons in the cupboards."Takeover
On 16 January 2008, MyFootballClub publicly announced the terms of its proposed purchase of Ebbsfleet United and put the terms of the sale to a vote of its members. MyFC members had seven days to register their opinion on the club's £635,000 takeover. For the sale to be finalised, 50% of the votes cast had to be in favour, with no quorum required. 18,112 MyFootballClub members voted on the takeover, with 95.89% in favour of purchasing a controlling stake in Ebbsfleet United.Ebbsfleet United manager at the time Liam Daish voiced his support for the deal soon after it was publicly announced. Speaking on the official Ebbsfleet United website, Daish said:
"Everyone has worked wonders to get this club into the top half of the Conference. We all agree the club needs something extra to take it to the next step. As a football fan, I think the MyFootballClub idea is fantastic. And as the coach, I look forward to the challenge of working with thousands of members to produce a winning team. Alan Kimble and myself are 100% committed to making this work."
Opinions on the proposed deal were mixed, as Daish's view was echoed by some football fans, but others, including some people currently involved with the sport, were less sanguine about MyFootballClub's involvement with Ebbsfleet United. Even some football insiders were positive about MyFC's proposed purchase of Ebbsfleet, however, including a representative of Brentford, who told CNN that the deal was "a very positive move for football because the club is owned by people who have real passion for it."
Decision-making
Following the approval of the purchase of Ebbsfleet United by the members of MyFC in January 2008, the leadership of MyFootballClub stated that its members would be able to make decisions affecting the club in future, including picking the starting lineup for matches, but a later members' vote resulted in a decision to leave selection issues to head coach Liam Daish. Ebbsfleet United's first trip to Wembley Stadium, and victory in the 2008 FA Trophy added to the publicity for the project, but questions about an internet society owning a football club remained.In August 2008, members of MyFootballClub were presented with the type of choice usually reserved for small board of directors: whether to approve a transfer of a player to another club. Ebbsfleet received a £140,000 offer from an unnamed club for forward John Akinde, and as the members of MyFC are the legal owners of the Fleet, they voted on whether to accept that offer. Shortly after the vote for members was publicly announced, it was reported that Championship side Bristol City had made the offer for Akinde. On 29 August 2008, MyFC members approved Akinde's transfer by more than an 82% majority.
Over time, fewer decisions were put to members, and of less impact at the club.
Membership decline
Even as early as September 2008, commentators noted that participation in votes on the MyFC website had decreased since the initial takeover decision, raising concerns about the ability of MyFootballClub to cover the continued losses at the club.It was reported in November 2009 that an estimated 23,000 members that had originally signed up prior to the takeover of Ebbsfleet F.C. no longer visited the site, nor contributed towards memberships, leaving around 9,000 active members.
By February 2010, the time of the next renewal date for the bulk of the members, it emerged that the renewal rate had fallen to 20% leaving around 5000 members.
In the close season prior to the 2012–13 season, the MyFootballClub Society membership stood at roughly 1300. A significant drop from the 32,000 peak, but the community remained active in supporting the club both financially and in terms of time. An example of this continued contribution to the club was in June 2012, where the society paid for a new piece of important equipment for the groundsman Peter Norton.
Even with the £150,000 realised from the Akinde transfer, plus possible add-on fees, Ebbsfleet faced estimated annual losses of approximately £800,000, and their financial situation remained precarious notwithstanding the investment of funds from MyFC. As well as suffering a decline in membership, relations between MyFootballClub and the club had deteriorated by November 2012.
Handover
By the beginning of 2013, MyFootballClub were considering options for relinquishing their shareholding in the club. In April, with the threat of administration, a takeover bid by Spain-based Carlos Kabir Karani was considered and approved in principle by both the Fleet Trust and MyFootballClub. Kevin Rye of Supporters Direct was highly dismissive of the bid, claiming it was "back-of-a-fag-packet stuff", and critical of both MyFootballClub and the Fleet Trust:"To hear a supporter say MyFootballClub are preventing investment from someone shows the desperation people are in and exposes the way that club is being run, which is not in a sustainable way. They have got to get a grip of that business rather than run after a guy who is promising four-year contracts and saying it's okay. It is one of the worst proposals I have ever seen put to anyone."
After Karani's bid stalled, MyFootballClub voted to hand over control to the supporter's trust but this still would have left a shortfall of £100,000 in order to avoid administration.
A subsequent takeover bid from KEH Sports Limited, a Kuwaiti-based consortium, offered to clear the urgent debts and set a £100,000 transfer budget for the 2013–14 season, as well as committing to construction of a new stand at Stonebridge Road. This was approved by MyFootballClub members vote as well as the Fleet Trust and completed by the end of May.
Performance
During MyFootballClub's control Ebbsfleet was relegated to the Conference South in 2009-10 but was promoted back to the national level at the first time of asking in the 2010–11 and in the 2011–12 season finished a respectable 14th.Ebbsfleet won the FA Trophy for the first time in the club's history in May 2008, months after the MyFootballClub takeover, with the club's support at Wembley apparently boosted to 25,000 by new fans.
By the time MyFootballClub members voted to sell the club in early 2013, membership numbers had dropped to 1,000 and fans were protesting against its continued involvement as the club stood on the verge of administration.