MyFootballClub

From Baruchnewmedia

MyFootballClub

MyFootballClub (MFC) is a popular computer game, Web site, online networking experiment, business model, and an actual soccer club. It's an English Industrial and Provident Society that sought, starting in August 2007, to recruit at least 50,000 football enthusiasts from across the world to purchase an English association football club. MyFootballClub's premise is to allow its paid members to control the club through a democratic voting process conducted over the internet. Member voting includes matters both on the pitch, such as team selection and player transfers, and off the field, like what type of food to serve at the stadium.

The probable new owners get to manage the club, voting online to choose match lineups and buying new players. To help run the team, the fans will be able to view all the matches online and, after the game, receive statistics on how each player has performed. They will also get weekly updates from the team’s head coach on how each player is doing during practice.

MFC is a product of the network society. MFC uses web based network model which is dynamic and responsive, open to anyone and as many who wish to join and, in some (though not all) respects, horizontal in its distribution of power. The mechanism of one membership/ one vote through “point-and-click” responses aspires to resist the centralization of power by owners, board members, and managers, as well as by the associated accumulation of rigid, multilayered bureaucracy. Online members are drawn not only from the UK, but countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Denmark, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

The statement, “Think of it as fantasy football, but with a real team” (Perry, S., 2007), encapsulates the dual attraction of MFC. It combines the enduring popularity of watching soccer with the immense appeal of sports computer games and, in particular, soccer manager and fantasy sports simulations, with media reports and blog entries regularly emphasizing this link.(MFC; www.myfootballclub.co.uk)

"MFC is understood as a form of networked media sport. It is also reflective of developing Hybrid media ecosystem that is evident in many popular cultural settings, with physical and digital media spaces intertwining in creative and unexpected forms. MFC uses, we suggest, networked communications technologies in a manner that seeks to erase its own mediation of time, space and social organization in the (re)construction of a evocative, immediate form of sports managerialist that renders the diffuse network in unitary form."

MyFootballClub members come from over 70 countries. One of the regions in which MyFootballClub was most popular was Scandinavia, and by the end of October 2007, MyFC had 380 paying members from Norway, 280 from Sweden, 97 from Finland, and 88 from Denmark.[25] By January 2008, over 1,500 Americans had become paid members of MyFootballClub.

MFC is a perfect example of New Media can be used to the advantage of entrepreneurship. MFC's creative way to collaborate fans through the spectrum of New Media provides the base for a revolution to come in Sports.

References

http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyFootballClub

Hutchins, Brett, David Rowe, and Andy Ruddock. "It's Fantasy Football Made Real": Networked Media Sport, the Internet, and the Hybrid Reality of MyFootballClub. Sociology of Sport Journal 26.1 (Mar. 2009): 89-106. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 23 May 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=37012032&site=ehost-live>.

--Swet1988 01:18, 23 May 2009 (CDT)