Eurostar sponsors crowdsourcing February 22, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : ebbsfleet, crowdsource, London , trackbackEurostar sponsors crowdsourcing
Readers of this blog may be aware of the unique football club Ebbsfleet United in Kent. The website “Myfootballclub.com” mobilised 28,000 online football fans to chip in £35 each and make a successful bid to buy a 75% controlling interest in the club. So its the first football club in the world ever to be owned by an online community. Some say it’s the first business in the world ever to be taken over by an online community (do you know better?)
Myfootballclub: http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/
Eurostar
Now Eurostar is a well known and prestigious brand who were already sponsoring Ebbsfleet international football club, since it helps to publicise the new Ebbsfleet International railway station which is part of the high speed rail route from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel. Eurostar’s reaction to the takeover is to embrace the change and piggyback onto the extra interest in the club, which generates free publicity for Ebbsfleet and everybody associated with it. They’ve also taken out some full page newspaper advertisements congratulating the new owners of the club - and naming each of us individually.
“Congratulations to the new owners of Ebbsfleet United”
One further step which showed that somebody at Eurostar does actually ‘get’ the whole crowdsourcing social media thing is that they submitted alternative versions of proposed advertisements to the online community at myfootballclub to be voted on. I voted for it too. The one which won was then sent for publication. It emphasises the fact that Ebbsfleet International is now really owned by 280,000 ordinary football fans whose names have been dumped (with individual permission) onto the pages of The Times.
Eurostar blog: http://fortomorrow.eurostar.com/
Crowdsourcing - what’s next?
So what’s next in line for being taken over by an online community? It would be trivial to buy a top quality racehorse, small syndicates have been doing that for years. What about a Formula 1 racing team? A national radio or TV station? How about setting up a website to accumulate enough people to buy a brewery, a supermarket chain or a bank? You can only buy one share each, so no individual gets control.
Social Media Café
On a smaller scale could we get a couple of thousand Social Media people in London to sign up to buy a little cafe together? Of course we could. Then we’d have somewhere to go that pays for itself, with free access for shareholders.
London social media cafe: http://londonsocialmediacafe.pbwiki.com/
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
As a big fan of user empowerment regardless of the context, I am definitely in!
Cheers Julius,
I just read the example you twittered crowdfounding an eco clothing brand
Seems you don’t have to offer a huge return in order to attract a large enough band of web backers.
Wow, that was amazing! Last similar feat by a ‘pirate’ company didn’t go anywhere, I think… Many copycats are about to flourish soon…
Power to the people! (beware of potential abuses/scams though…)
This fund pooling concept is not new I suppose. People have been setting up cooperatives that in turn own banks, real estate developers, shops etc for decades. The only new twist in the myfootball success is the fund was from an online crowd, pushing the number of participation, hence smaller contributions were needed from each (instead of $1000s per person to set up big businesses).
Anyway, it’s good to know that crowdsourcing has finally moved from serial begging ‘business’ model. (the million dollar homepage, ‘help me settle my debt/credit card’, ‘let’s all be millionaires’ serial letters, misc. pyramid schemes etc.)
I want in. £100 a head?
Perhaps of even greater interest than crowdsourcing itself, will be how the emergent “organisation” continues to run the business. The soccer team example should be followed with some interest to see how the decision-making takes place and how alliances form or fail. I mean, are decisions based on a kind of citizen-initiated referenda and then an online vote?
The organisational psychology and group decision-making processes will be very interesting to follow in the coming months.