Ebbsfleet United: Members Disappear, Club Failing, No-One Shocked
Well, no-one saw this coming: Ebbsfleet United, the “world’s first web community owned club”, has lost most of its community in its second year of operation and the club is spiralling towards disaster on and off the field.
It’s hard to say just how unsurprising this is. Eighteen months ago, we noted that the bubble had burst, with interest from members on being involved with the MyFootballClub website declining dramatically.
The loss in membership was clear by February this year, as 23,000 members did not renew from their initial investment (a puppy isn’t just for Christmas, chaps), leaving just 9,000 paying their dues of £35 annually.
The club’s budget was slashed, and Ebbsfleet now sit second from bottom in the Blue Square Premier, with just nine points from eighteen games.
Still, the venture has substantially boosted the profile of the football journalist Will Brooks who started the whole thing.
Now Brooks, as he told the Independent’s Steve Tongue, has come up with a new plan to save the club: asking people to pay more. “We are working on a new model where fewer members pay more. For example, 3,000 members paying £10 a month could sustain the club,” he said.
So, the club only has 9,000 increasingly frustrated folks left as members, yet Brooks thinks a third of them will be willing to almost triple their investment and keep doing so to save Brook’s model, which was flawed from the start?
One hopes that in looking at this experiment, observers are able to distinguish it from anything to do with real community-owned clubs who have actual sustainable business plans involving supporters who have a long-lasting connection to their team.
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Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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If the price gets that high, I might have to jump ship as well. I’m quite disappointed by how massive a clusterf**k this has become.
Given that your slogan suggests that you “explore” World football, this just comes across as self-effacing drivel. Incidentally, criticising a journalist and then failing to properly use the apostrophe to make his name possessive makes me think you’re not a proper journalist.
Maybe your next article will “explore” the concept.
Well Steve, can you tell me if Brooks has re-invested the £287,000 “admin fees” he siphoned off the payments of MyFC members – putting those back in the club would be like getting 10,000 new members.
Is your only point on this article a single mis-placed apostrophe? And on the subject of being picky, do you actually know what self-effacing means?
Nobody saw this coming? Really? People in the Society were well aware of the risk going back to July 2008. As the involvement in Club activities and sense of ownership for the casual member failed to increase significantly since that time, it was no wonder than 22,000 failed to renew in January 2009, keeping their £35 for more engaging pastimes.
Now whether the MyFC model can be fixed in order to keep and grow the membership is up for debate at MyFootballClub. Other debates include:
Should our membership fee be higher or will this put people off?
Can we run the website ourselves?
Has MyFC only held off the inevitable for a season or so buy clearing the previous debts?
Should MyFC wind up and sell the club back to the former directors for a nominal fee?
Can the Supporters Trust bring anything new to the club if they own it?
If the local attendance at Ebbsfleet is only 1000 or so, does the club need to accept relegation and find its level?
As sp3ktor says, Steve, if you have anything substantive to contribute please do so. sp3ktor also raises an important point we should have addressed initially about the admin fee that has been collected.
Dave — do you think I seriously meant “no-one saw this coming” given what those words link to and the title of this piece? Those other questions are interesting, but in my opinion the MyFC model was flawed from the very start. As we addressed here two years ago.
Humble apologies Tom, I forgot you’d written those articles previously.
What happened at MyFC was Cargo Cult. Like those guys in the South Pacific after WW2 who thought they could get airlifted supplies simply by donning a coconut headset and waving some palm leaves (look it up if you don’t believe me). Those in charge at MyFC thought they could just make it work if everyone “believed”. Stick up a forum, that’ll do.
There are plenty of good examples of communities collaborating through websites, and plenty of good examples of real supporter owned clubs. But there was no attempt to understand how both of these really worked, and deeper than that, no attempt to understand how individual members were interacting with the Society and the Club, how the Society needed to communicate with the Club and the Members. Do also recall The Metrologists comments made 2 years ago, this is what MyFC was supposed to be, and what the remaining members are still pushing for: http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/2007/11/13/myfootballclubcouk-purchases-ebbsfleet-united-fc-fan-ownership-on-the-rise/#comment-829
Take something like Hattrick – slightly different as it’s a game, but there are many ways to be involved in the game and the community. You can spend every day on there, get really involved in the national game, youth system, or you can just log on once a week to set your team. Again, there’s a difference in that the basic product is free, with premium options available for a small subscription.
I still think the MyFC model could have worked, but wasn’t implemented properly, and not allowed to develop into what it needed to be. MyFC could have retained the core local Ebbsfleet fans (1000 or more?) but provided an interesting enough experience for those casual members worldwide to log in once a week or less and still feel involved. And most importantly to bring their £35 each year.
I hope that in looking at this experiment, observers are able to distinguish it from anything to do with real community collaboration websites, that have actual sustainable business plans.
I have to agree with many of the previous comments. The concept could’ve worked, and worked well. I was an enthusiastic supporter from day one (living in the US). I totally bought into the concept, as owning a sports team is almost every sportsfan’s dream. Two things killed it for me:
1.) The Board Election…out of a global membership, 6 of the 8 board members woudn up being from the local Kent area (I think 2 were even from the previous supporters trust). Once the board was up and running, it seemed like members no longer had a say, but were expected to be a rubber stamp for the boards decision.
2.) The increase in player budget…during the heady post FA Cup days the members (many of whom no doubt bailed on the club shortly thereafter) voted overwhelmingly voted to “go for broke” (who knew literally) by increasing the salary budget to 10K per month from 7K. The club was losing money hand over fist with the lower budget averaging 1,400 per game. According to my calculations the club would’ve had to average nearly 2,500 just to have a chance of breaking even with that budget.
I think in hindsight the concept would’ve worked MUCH BETTER if it worked like a true Partnership…instead of 35,000 people paying 35,maybe 4-5K paying 250-300 quid, then members elect general partners to oversee the running of the club, with some input from the members. I am very optimistic a concept like that could work well, to bad MyFC isn’t going to be that concept.