[Air-L] The wisdom of crowds? an interesting experiment in the UK...

[M.B.Gaved]

Hi folks

Thought I'd flag up an interesting and amusing experiment into the "wisdom of crowds" going on in the UK. One to read over your tea/ coffee break.

"My Football Club" http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/ goes one step further than "Fantasy Football Leagues" and sports computer games and instead proposes that a group of people club together to buy a real football club and manage it in real life via a website.

The project invites people to pay 35 pounds sterling to become a member, and then you get a vote in choosing what club the community should buy, and help to choose the team. So far they've got over 50,000 people signed up and a fund of 1.375 million (sterling) to buy a team. 

Football in England and Wales is organised into multiple leagues, the top four comprising of 92 professional teams. While the top teams such as Manchester United and Chelsea are huge multinational corporations, many of the teams in the lower of the four leagues and indeed the semi-professional 'feeder' leagues below operate on much smaller budgets so a million pounds is actually a realistic purchase price for some reasonably well known clubs. 

The project looks to be formally registered with the financial authorities (it doesn't feel like a scam) and has been garnering a lot of publicity, tapping into the romantic belief that every fan knows better than the manager about which players should have been selected for that crucial big match, and giving them the opportunity to do so. The project proposes that when a team is bought, the existing manager will be moved to be "head coach" and he will advise members via the website:

" “How will the team be picked?”
The Head Coach will brief members. This will include a review of the previous match, reports from the training ground and views on the forthcoming opposition. He will also give his thoughts on players, their form and fitness, as well as possible selections and tactics.

Members will then submit their preferred 11, formation and tactics. A database will calculate the most popular choice. This will be handed to The Head Coach to instigate. " (http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/faq.php)

I'm really intrigued to see how this develops. Can 50,000 people steer a real life football team through a website? Some interesting technical as well as social questions in there - how debates and conflicts will get resolved on the forums will be interesting to say the least. Talk about a passionate, active web community... some intriguing research in there for sure. I am very tempted to start tracking this one!

kind regards
Mark 


p.s. Of course, for all you misguided souls across the pond in the USA who now have the pleasure of David Beckham's company, when I refer to "football" I of course mean the noble sport of Association Football (cheeky grin).



Mark Gaved
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, UK
MK7 6AA

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/mark