Abstract
Chapter 5 explores the phenomenon of football supporters coming to the rescue of their club at times when the future of the club had been put at risk by the mismanagement of private ownership regimes. Through their rallying efforts, involving fundraising, lobbying, volunteering, campaigning, networking and ultimately taking control of the ailing club, fans have managed to preserve their clubs as valued local cultural institutions, in part by implementing more sustainable, democratic ownership and operations structures. A range of pressures have however made this a difficult ongoing task, not least in the form of inherited debt and other financial burdens, but also due to the prevailing wider context of a football industry still in thrall to more speculative private ownership and investment models. That is not to say however that fans haven’t made mistakes of their own along the way.
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Porter, C. (2019). Clubs in Crisis: Supporters to the Rescue. In: Supporter Ownership in English Football. Football Research in an Enlarged Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05438-0_5
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