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The football club as co-op?

It's a scenario many Premiership fans dream of: Wrestling control of their beloved club from foreign owners – those 'distant billionaires, who never visit the club, sell star players and run up massive debts'.

So what would happen if fans took control of the Boardroom? It's an approach that works for Barcelona, arguably Europe's most successful team over recent years, whose 170,000 shareholders elect the club president and help raise finance through membership fees.

So should the cooperative model be imported to the UK? Sean Hamil from the Birkbeck Sport Business Centre examined the Barcelona approach in a recent article in the Evening Standard. Click here to read the full article.

Sean is the co-author with Geoff Walters and Lee Watson of a study of the FC Barcelona ownership and business model, which will appear in Who Owns Football? The Governance and Management of the Club Game Worldwide (Oxford: Routledge), to be published in July.

Click here to learn more about the Sport Business Centre at Birkbeck.

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