MyFootballClub

MyFootballClub

Own the club, pick the team.
Type of site	Industrial and Provident Society and Internet forum
Available in	English
Owner	MyFootballClub Society, Ltd.
Created by	Will Brooks
Website	www.myfootballclub.co.uk
Alexa rank	1,773,134 (April 2014[update])
Registration	Yes
Launched	26 April 2007
Current status	Active

MyFootballClub is 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.

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.