Quote Adeybull="Adeybull"And guess what? That is pretty well my conclusion too. I really doubt most fans give a flying you-know-what who is in charge, as long as they have someone to moan about and blame.
A very dedicated fan said to me (whilst collecting last Friday) that Coco the clown could be chairman for all he cared, as long as we had a club to follow and a decent team to watch.
Was he that wrong? Was he heck, IMO.
Internet forms attract fans who tend, on average to take a more active interest in such things than most, I suggest? Having been involved twice now in establishing supporter organisations and doing petitions and surveys and things, I know only too well just how hard it is to raise any significant body of supporters.
And how much work is involved.'"
For the most part I'd agree, ordinary fans don't want a direct day to day say in how the club is run (excepting team selection of course!) but you'd be surprised how many people would change their mind if they could demonstrate they were an 'owner' of their club by having a share certificate, even if they only stuck it on the wall. I'm sure I have my Bullbuilder certificate attached to something, solid, somewhere (even if it's not framed and suspended with blu-tac...) and if this allowed them a vote in who represented their interests on the Board then this might become the beginning of a cultural shift in which people can begin to take an interest. This is quite different than getting people to attend regular meetings or stand around getting petitions signed. I'm afraid we've become conditioned to one way of doing things and believe that is the only way things can be done, but you might be surprised if things start to be done differently how quickly attitudes can change.
I've seen it at first hand when visiting Green Bay in the frozen tundra of northern Wisconsin, the Packers are one of the most successful franchises in the NFL and are a community owned not for profit, prospering in the cut throat world of the ultra capitalist NFL amidst a legion of billionaire owners whilst building their roster bottom up, just as we've begun to do through investment in the academy. This is a small hard working industrial town whose civic pride is totally invested in the idea of community ownership and whose model of doing things remains an example of how things can be done very differently, if you don't believe me then have a read of the countless articles from sporting magazines to management journals. It doesn't mean we could replicate such a feat with the Bulls, the scale of the competition and revenue streams are vastly different, but now and again in the past I'm sure some of us liked to believe we were the people's team and did do things a little differently. Just because things are as they are now, doesn't mean they need always be that way.
