On paper this is an easy question to answer, there’s people with the title Owner. They own the team. Professional sports all have an owner – even the MLS where the league technically owns the teams there are still franchise owners. Over the weekend though in the Premier League we saw the fans try to take back their team. Manchester United fans came out to protest the team’s owners and stormed the field which caused their game against Liverpool to be canceled. It’s clear that the team doesn’t belong to the owners.
The events at Old Trafford on Sunday show that there’s more than just owners and consumers in the world of sports. Fans in the most simple sense are consumers. But really teams are more than just a product, they’re a binding force in a community which makes fans more than consumers as well – they’re fanatics. When you look at English soccer specifically, there’s a sense of pride and community from who you support. It’s rare to see a political style protest against a consumer good, but you saw it passionately with English soccer in the last month. Fans steered teams away from creating a European Super League. They just shut down a game because they don’t like how their team has been run. The Glazer family has owned Manchester United since 2005, but the fans have been passionate about their team for much longer. But the club has been around in its current form since 1878. The last 15 years are just a small chapter of the storied club. I’m sure a significant portion of the Red Army have been around well before the Glazers. Clearly the passion for their team runs deep.
In American sports you really only see this level of passion at the college level – mostly in football. Teams are constantly swayed by booster and alumni. Coaches are booted simply by fan petitions. It’s not a co-op style ownership but it might as well be. College fans feel a connection that runs deep just because they attended the school at one point. But there aren’t any owners in college sports. Most the teams are state schools, which more or less means they’re owned by the state – a state that’s run by and for the people. So it almost makes sense that the fate of a college team can be determined by the fans. Professional sports though are a little different.
For professional sports in the United States you don’t see that kind of fandom unless a team is threatening to move. Then you’ll see protests and government try to get involved. Owners are part of the team – owners become the long term constant that help define how fans react and teams act. Mark Cuban, Jerry Jones, and George Steinbrenner are names that come to mind when talking about team owners. They help drive the team to success or failure. In the same way those owners are celebrated, names like Art Modell and Robert Irsay are hated for moving teams in the middle of the night. But that’s about the only time owners are protested in American professional sports.
Sports teams at all levels and in all leagues last longer than any one owner. They last longer than any one player or coach. The only constant are the fans. They’re the people who attend the games and make the team’s existence even possible. Teams belong to fans, the Green Bay Packers are the true embodiment of this – no single owner, just a large group of shareholders. Manchester United might be traded on NYSE but thats not the same as what Green Bay does. Sure you’ll still need people who manage the team, but the product itself belongs to the fans. Customer service is the main focus in any successful company, sports fans just show it a little differently and more passionately. Owners are meant to be stewards of the team – try to add to the legacy of a team and build on the community. Teams with legacies as long as Manchester United have been around before their current owners and will be there long after these owners leave. The fans will still be around.