Fan Equity – Not only a fan but also an Owner

When a private limited company needs more money for its growth and expansion plans, it goes to public to raise the capital. Thus, it becomes a publicly-owned company. People who buy company’s shares bear the highest risk but they also enjoy the collective ownership of the company which is transferable. It is a win-win situation both for company and its shareholders. Shareholders get paid yearly dividend from company’s net profit and also enjoy the appreciation in the value of their investment, while a company gets a permanent source of capital without any repayment liability.

Sports fan ownership
Similar model of sharing the equity is catching up fast in the sports industry with lot of sports clubs having loyal and passionate fan base. Sports is all about community and belongingness and thus leveraging on such emotions, sports clubs are making their fans the stakeholders.

Three examples across the international sports circuit:

The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team who pride themselves on being the only publicly-owned, not-for-profit, major league professional team in the United States. Instead of having one owner or a handful of partners like every other NFL team, the Packers are owned by hundreds of thousands of fans.

The Melbourne Storm, a rugby league team based in Melbourne is looking to follow the similar model of fan ownership and make the fans owners of the NRL club. Storm chairman Bart Campbell said “We see fan ownership as an innovative way to turbo-charge the ambitious growth plans we have for the Storm by doubling our membership to 50,000 by 2023.”

ORDER is one of Australia’s newest esports brands which has introduced an equity crowd funding campaign saying “Own a piece of the esports industry”. The investment will allow them to develop their high-performance training facility and to create Australia’s strongest, most stable and successful esports organization.

ResonVate Thought
Fan equity makes sports engaging, entertaining and rewarding.

I would like to ResonVate
with ideas on creating value, growing a business, people in the forefront
which can be applied in business funding, customer loyalty, non-profit, social awareness
in areas like Non-profits, Retail, Services, Start-ups

Reference
https://www.birchal.com/company/order
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc.
https://theconversation.com/green-bay-packers-fans-love-that-their-team-doesnt-have-an-owner-just-dont-call-it-communism-102531
https://www.theroar.com.au/melbourne-storm-set-to-investigate-fan-ownership-model/
Contributors
Manish Jairath (Innovation Scout)
Dhwani (Innovation Scout)