FC100000? Just the FC99900 to go, by the looks of it

Seventeen years after the much-criticised MyFootballClub project was launched, its founder wants to do the same thing again.

Seventeen years on, here we go again. It was in November 2007, when my hair was brown and I lived in a different county, that MyFootballClub completed its purchase of Ebbsfleet United. After a fawning reception from a media which should have known better and a launch which was more successful than many had expected on account of much of this coverage, the whole experiment ran aground amid dwindling subscriptions and the club had to be sold in 2013.

Now, we’re being told, it’s back. The same guy who set it all up all those years ago, Will Brooks, has decided that he hasn’t learned anything about the ethics of buying up an established football club to be the plaything of randos on the internet, only about how you should fund such a venture. But already things haven't quite moved forward in the way in which it had been anticipated they would.

The hot gossip had been that a deal had been more or less agreed with Scunthorpe United of the National League North. Although the new-ish owners of the club haven’t been particularly popular of late–they failed to get promotion back at the end of last season after losing in the playoffs and are currently involved in a four-way tussle for the title at the top of the table–supporters were especially happy over this speculation and made their opinions very public both online and at their match last weekend, while the general reaction of supporters of other clubs who might have been involved seems to have been a sigh of relief at not being chosen for this experiment themselves rather than any sort of disappointment.

So, what is different about Brooks’ latest attempt to run a football club while getting other people to pay for it this time around? In an interview with Matt Slater of The Athletic (£), his primary concern seems to be that his model for putting money into Ebbsfleet was flawed. People were asked to pay £35 a year to buy in 2007, with a peak of 32,000 paying up. They completed the purchase of the club in February 2008 and won the FA Trophy at Wembley that May.

Judging by Brooks’ comments to Slater, the biggest issue that he had at Ebbsfleet seems to have been the (lack of) options to make payment to his organisation in the first place. By requesting annual subscriptions, there was a year and a half between the first subscription-payers stumping up their first £35 and their first renewal date. Paypal didn’t do direct debits, so there was no way of doing anything beyond hoping that those who’d subscribed before would do so again.

This did not happen. Without an option to pay monthly, the group saw its subscriptions atrophy over the remainder of their time there and they had to sell up in 2013. The club have been bouncing between the National League and the National League South ever since, much as they were before. Ironically, they were relegated from one to the other for the fourth time in the last seventeen years on the day before this interview was published.

So, this is FC100000, then. They have a wish list for the clubs that they’d like to own, and Scunthorpe United were number two on that list, although we may expect that position to plummet after the club issued a statement distancing themselves from it.

But that the Scunthorpe owners might not have been keen on such a move isn’t really that surprising. On Saturday, they had a glimpse of the potential of what they’re dealing with when more than 8,200 people packed into Glanford Park to see them beat second-placed Chester 3-1 and move four points clear at the top of the table.

Of course, even winning the National League North at the end of this season wouldn’t quite be returning the club to where they feel they should be. They are an EFL club who were pushed down this level by negligently bad ownership, and getting back to that status will always be the first priority of anybody arriving at the club. They were members of that elite 92 from 1950 until 2022, and they want that place back.

But it’s not easy. Six of the top seven in the National League are former EFL clubs (or in one case the descendants thereof), and there are big names mired elsewhere in the division. Oxford United and Luton Town, both League Cup winners in the 1980s, fell into this division and took years to get back. And the division is otherwise littered with dazed former EFL stalwarts, all wondering how it came to this.

Oldham Athletic became the first former Premier League club to have fallen this far when they fell through the trapdoor in 2022. They’re in the playoff places at the moment, but their first two seasons at this level saw them finish 10th and 12th. Southend United were regulars in what’s now called the Championship in the mid-1990s. They fell a year before Oldham and their completed three seasons at this level have finished with them 13th, 8th and 9th. In other words, they haven’t made the playoffs since they fell to this level, even taking into account the National League’s generous six-team end of season allocation.

But if Scunthorpe United were only number two on their list, who’s number one, and who else are attracting the interest of their members? Well, the good news there is that they’re quite open about listing which clubs they’re most interested in picking over the carcasses of and number one on the list at the time of writing are Torquay United, who are currently in 5th place in the National League South and chasing that league title because they’re still only three points off the top of the table.

Torquay’s position in some respects doesn’t feel that much different to that of Scunthorpe, a former EFL mismanaged through the National League and now unable to get back from one of its regional feeders without a greater degree of struggle than they were expecting. Following relegation two seasons ago they finished 18th in the National League South last season, though that lowly position was primarily caused by a ten-point deduction for entering into administration and a further one-point deduction for subsequently fielding a suspended player.

There are others on the list too, of course, and some present obvious challenges. Hereford FC are at number nine, but their supporters have owned a controlling stake in the club since January 2023. Another club, Bath City at number eight, also have the fans controlling their ownership. At either of those two clubs any decision over this little stunt would have to be voted through by trust members, and there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of optimism for it anywhere.

That leaves another six clubs which FC100000’s members have voted as their top ten “clubs with most potential”, and those are:

• York City (second in the National League, just moved into a swanky new stadium)

• Hartlepool United (relegated from the EFL in 2023, finished 12th last season and currently in 13th place)

• Hampton & Richmond (it’s difficult to imagine that their place on this list isn’t at least partly based on some sort of Ted Lasso-related belief that this club can be mutated into a real-life AFC Richmond)

• Kidderminster Harriers (currently third in the National League North, having played eight of their last nine seasons at this level)

• Yeovil Town (relegated from the EFL after 16 years and then down to the National League South, although they were promoted back at the end of last season)

• Aldershot Town (National League members since relegation from League Two in 2013, currently 16th in the table)

Whether there’s a massive media storm to come surrounding this story remains to be seen. At the time of writing*, the launch video on FC100000’s YouTube account has had less than 600 views and there’s nothing on their website to say how many people have already signed up.

But the numbers that are visible certainly aren’t impressive. Their YouTube account has 24 subscribers, while their X account has 61 followers, their Instagram account has 18 followers, their Facebook page has four likes and five followers, and they have four followers on Bluesky. How many have actually signed up for this, of course, unknown, but none of it suggests that this launch has been a rip-roaring success.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with fans owning football clubs. But it needs to be the fans of the clubs concerned, under a trust model which doesn’t make pie in the sky promises about the decisions that are made in its running. Football clubs are worth more than just being playthings for others who want to live out some sort of Football Manager-related fantasy. Scunthorpe United supporters made their feelings on the matter very clear, and there’s nothing to suggest that Brooks won’t receive the same welcome wherever he chooses to park his snake oil delivery vehicle next.

*All numbers correct as of 17.00 on 24/03/2025