Not that it’s necessarily the same, but the Green Bay Packers have managed to be the only remaining fan-owned team in the NFL (American Football) for decades now. It’s interesting to see how they do it, but I think it certainly creates an environment where the staff and team wants to succeed more.

Clubs? Sure. Successful Premier League clubs? Not a fucking chance.

That ship has long sailed in the case of the PL.

The amounts of money involved means that fan ownership is not viable.

Germany have had their ownership rules in place from long before the commercial explosion of national league football.

i think it’s the law in germany for clubs to be supporter owned

Exeter is

People here seem to know more than owners sometimes

Yes but the only way it can happen is that the supporters boycott the club and essentially hold the owners to ransom. If supporters held a full boycott for a 3-4 seasons, the club would lose so much value that the owner would have to sell to a fans group. Or at least cede 50+1 like in Germany.

People just are not willing to suck it up for a few years. Or, are just so disorganized that they cannot arrange a meaningful boycott.

If you are extremely unhappy with the owners/board, such as Man Utd, Everton etc and you’re still buying season tickets then you are a part of the problem. You are sponsoring it.

If Everton for example are so unhappy with how the club is being run, boycott next season. Let the club go into crisis, let them drop down the league’s, let them go into administration, even liquidation. Start a new fan owned club and when the liquidation occurs buy the branding rights. The council wouldn’t allow the new stadium to be rezoned, it would have to go to the new Everton.

People are just not willing to suck it up for a few years though. And I’m not having this whole thing “Support the team”.

Club has to go bust really.

That’s how I bought my share in Finn Harps when the fans took over.

Unfortunately, our identity is so ingrained with being fan owned that I really see us struggling to be competitive long term.

But we punched above our weight having been in the prem for 6 out of 9 seasons with a part time squad and a budget dwarfed by everyone else.

It was no trophy obviously but the pride in seeing the club compete with and stay up over better funded professional teams was something else.

my club, Bohemian FC is fan owned

It’s possible but you will never compete with oil / war profiteer money.

Heart of Midlothian Football Club is fan owned, largest club in the UK to be so.

Exeter City in League One are actual fan-owned, as are AFC Wimbledon obviously.

Newport County (League 2) currently are, but look like they might be selling a 52% share Huw Jenkins.

A number of other clubs have at some point been fan owned (Wrexham for example) and there are plenty of examples in non-league (Bury FC, FC United of Manchester, Chester FC, 1874 Northwich etc.)

Notably, most of these clubs are either protest clubs or fans buying a club following horrid mismanagement.

Apparently there are also a bunch of other clubs which are minority owned by fans but it’s hard for me to confirm this with quick searches. So might be true for Accrington Stanley, Carlisle United, Lincoln City & Grimsby Town.

Heart of Midlothian might be the biggest example of a fan owned club in the UK however over in Scotland having gained ownership 2 years ago.

Yes, of course. It’s incredibly unlikely for an existing club unless they get close to bankruptcy, but it’s definitely possible for new clubs. Some even do pretty well with it!

So I made another post here of examples but I’m just going to make this on the pros and cons involved with fan ownership

Cons

• You will be out moneyed by richer single-owner clubs
• Prone to creating imbalance within the league as larger clubs gain larger ownership and bigger clubs have an easier time attracting new fans. A vicious cycle
• Risk of Failing to Adapt - Supporters getting locked in a cycle that stops working

Pros

• Non-Profit Football Clubs - tickets and shirts should be solid to break even, not price gouge supporters
• No Stupidly Incompetent Owners - Fans will hold the boards responsible and are less likely to destroy their financial situations
• Feeling and being a part of the club you support
• Generally more stable clubs and should typically get good attendance

Yes and no.

It’s tough to get from the current setup to a fan owned model. The private owners have legal right to own what they have bought, government seizing asset owner by private individuals isn’t necessarily a great thing. At to that many owners are foreign and even foreign states so the diplomatic head ache would be far greater than many MPs would care to take on, let alone a PM.

Football clubs are important cultural institutions in their local community and beyond. It makes a lot of sense that they shouldn’t be run as for profit businesses by soulless American hedge funds, investors trying to turn it into the NBA or the play things of ultra rich kids or Russian gangsters.

But if we got to that point would it be great?

Well we have seen foreign clubs being fan owned or partly fan owned make very shortsighted decisions. Fans are impatient and will tend to favour decisions where you overspend now and figure that it will make more money in the long run; but it doesn’t always go like that(Barcelona and Schalke says hello). Private Owners also tend to do this, but then investor can pay the bill(though sometimes they don’t. But that can be sorted with some salary caps.

In the BuLi the non-Bayern teams struggle to find the investment needed if they are ever to catch up with Bayern.

Funny enough we have also seen the fan owned giants in FCB+ RM being the most gung ho about adopting more business like decision making, being ruthless in pursuing International Super League and putting pressure on UEFA, La Liga and anyone else in their way.

I would like fan owned clubs; even if it does mean Man Utd gets back on top with their bigger fan base.