My Soccer Club: Now We Americans Can Buy a Team for $50 apiece

By: Laurie | December 26th, 2007

Earlier this year, twenty-thousand proud owners chipped in £35 each to buy the British Football Conference team Ebbsfleet United Football Club.

Now the Americans want in on the act. According to the NY Times (article is at the bottom of the first page):

A group of young fans has formed the first fan-operated soccer team in North America and wants to enter a team in the National Premier Soccer League next summer. The N.P.S.L. is the sport’s third tier in this country, after Major League Soccer and the United Soccer Leagues.

“Our members pay a $50 annual fee and will get to vote on everything, including managerial decisions,” said Trevor Hayward, one of the founders of My Soccer Club USA (mysoccerclubusa.com). Hayward, who lives in Westchester County, outside of New York City, said he was in his “early 20s.” He added that the 115 all-male members are “heavily involved in the technology industry and have a median age of 25-26.”

The group needs 1,000 investors to chip in $50 each to join the NPSL.

So how does this work? According to the website, when you buy your share, you get to help manage.

One person, one vote! No member of MySoccerClub USA has any extra pull in terms of the club’s direction, not even the advisory group. The membership will give us suggestions/options on areas of interest, and we will pare them down into a manageable format, then bring the final decision back to the membership for a decision. Majority takes the day, with a run-off if there isn’t a majority decision

Oh. The power. How much time have you spent swearing at your news source when your team manager makes boneheaded decisions? This would give you the opportunity to swear at yourself.

Well worth $50.

So come one. Click on the link. You know you want to.

(UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Tom over at Pitch Invasion has some thoughts on this, as well as questions that we should probably all wonder about before we fork over our $50. Thanks, Tom. Some of us see “NY Times” and automatically think “legit.”)

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Category: North America, World Football

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matt

MORE LIKE MYSILENCETOMCLUBUSA AMIRITE?
Tom

"Dave", my information is based on emails with the founder. All the founder has to do is answer simple questions, I'm all in favour of this in principle. But over two months, he has not done so.

"Dave", be careful about accusing someone of a "smear campaign"; it's weird that a commenter called "John" used the same words -- "sad" and "smear" -- over at my site as well tonight, isn't it?
Laurie

Dave, if you want to provide me with info on the legal status of the club and the 501(c)(3) application, I'll be happy to post the organization's side also.

I think Tom and I are both more interested in getting correct information out than in pursuing an agenda. If you want to give me more details, I'll be happy to add them to the post as well.
Dave Sheiner

I'm a new member of My Soccer Club USA, Tom Dunmore is on some kind of personal sabotage mission here, his information is based on a couple jealous posters asking crazy questions on a forum, thats it. Maybe he wish he thought of it first? its pretty sad that a man spends all his time trying to bad mouth and organization. I've been a member over a month now and the folks behind the effort definitely know what they're doing and have some major announcements coming up to the public. So Tom, please grow up and move on, you've got a very interesting site there, i'd consider focusing some more time on it and less on a smear campaign based on forum postings.
Laurie

Thanks, Tom. Valid points. It never occurred to me to question what kind of structure the organization would have. Blinded by the words "NY Times," I suppose. I've updated the post with your link.
Tom

I've talked to the founder of mysoccerclub and written an article about it here on Pitch Invasion. As you can see, sadly I have pretty serious reservations about the professionalism of this venture.
matt

can't they let us in on a league in a country where people care...you know...so we'd make money?
Ryan

That's funny. The team I work for Queen City FC is in the NPSL, we pretty much put in all our money to get the team running.