Ethos Public Relations Manchester

Football is the focus - as communities are urged to take ownership

by Ethos public relations

Ed Mayo, Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, delivered an inspiring keynote speech at policy seminar – Community Shares – Taking Ownership Local – in London recently and paid special attention to co-operative football.

In his speech – Future potential for community investment, Building on the lessons - Ed said the way to improve football in the UK is to follow the approach of leading Spanish clubs and hand them over to their fans.

"Of the 11 players who started out on the field for Spain’s winning World Cup team, 10 of them play for a co-operative,” he said to a packed audience of over 100 representatives from HM Treasury, The Office for Civil Society, The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

“FC Barcelona is the poster child of co-operative football and I am delighted that, with Supporters Direct, we have launched a report and the first UK version of the Barcelona statutes – with the support and encouragement of Barca’s outgoing President Joan LaPorta. Barcelona has 170,000 members and is a remarkable case of democratic innovation – drawing members jury-style by lot for its Delegate Assemblies. If you want to change the Board in Barcelona, you vote for it, as 53,000 did in the elections last month.

“The health warnings apply. Not all Spanish clubs are organised on anything like this model and there is if anything more of a common tradition of ownership by fans in Germany. However, you can only grow community ownership not import it (there are fifteen clubs now in the UK organised like this – the most recent is Lewes – but not in the top flight).

“But perhaps there is a Spanish recipe here that we too can enjoy.”

The policy seminar also saw the launch of two new guides to community share issues - Community Shares: A Practitioner's Guide and Investing in Community Shares. The new guides have been released by a coalition of organisations that provide local enterprise support, including Co-operatives UK and the Development Trusts Association (DTA).

The Community Shares Programme is a two-year action research project, launched in January 2009, due to a huge surge of interest in community investment. There have been a total of 40 new schemes in the last twelve months alone. The registration of new Industrial and Provident Societies (IPSs) more than doubled in the last quarter of 2009 and recent initiatives have raised more than £42m from over 30,000 community investors across the UK.

The two guides to community share issues - Community Shares: A Practitioner's Guide and Investing in Community Shares are available from www.communityshares.org.uk/resources.

The new football report - Barca – fan ownership and the future of football clubs’ - and the full FC Barcelona statutes are available on line at www.uk.coop/barca.

Posted at 22^nd July 2010