Community Ownership

‘Supporter owned’ and ‘community club’ are phrases that have become popular when talking about clubs. Lots of clubs do lots of great things in their community, and many supporters feel like they ‘morally own’ their club, but when we talk about community ownership we mean that:

• A minimum of 50% +1 of the voting rights of the club to be controlled collectively by a democratic entity which has an open and inclusive membership
  • ‘Democratic’ means the membership of the entity works on a one member one vote principle
  • ‘Open and inclusive’ means that there are no substantial barriers to participate as a voting member, with membership open to all that are sympathetic to the aims of the club
• Any profits are reinvested back into the club as opposed to being distributed to shareholders
• The club is committed to running as a sustainable business

It’s not to say that other forms of ownership don’t work and should be ignored, but our research suggests that Supporter Ownership opens up a number of benefits to a club that are much harder to achieve or not possible to achieve in a privately owned club.

Part Supporter (or Community) Ownership

Some clubs are “Part Supporter Owned” and we define this as a shareholding with a protected position in the legal entity that owns the club or assets, such as:

• A shareholders agreement setting out rights of supporters
• Embedded rights in the articles of association, such as a golden share
• 25%+1 of ‘investor shares’ in a Private Company Limited by Shares which is committed to operating sustainably (if not a viable business in reality shares become much less influential, power rests with those willing to subsidise losses)