When Oakland A’s ownership announced on April 19 their intention to relocate the team to Las Vegas, it kicked off a fan protest movement that has grown throughout the summer. A reverse boycott at the Oakland Coliseum on June 13 captured national attention. Then the show hit the road, as “Sell the team” chants rang out at the All-Star Game in Seattle and during a road series at Dodger Stadium. A “Unite the Bay” rally followed at Oracle Park in San Francisco before another reverse boycott that drew more than 37,000 fans on Aug. 6 in Oakland. This past weekend, the protest arrived in the nation’s capital, as loud “Sell” chants were heard during the A’s-Nationals game on Friday.
The protests have thus far fallen on deaf ears in the A’s owners’ suite, and after 55 years in Oakland, the club’s departure may be a foregone conclusion. But as rumblings of relocation threats in Baltimore and Milwaukee begin to shake the baseball landscape and the Tampa Bay stadium situation remains unresolved, are protests the only option fans have to try to influence the owners of their favorite teams? A group called Stewards LLC has been working on a project it hopes will give fans another avenue of influence and, ultimately, more of a voice.
Earlier this summer, as the Coliseum crowd around him chanted “Sell the team” at the first reverse boycott, James Wigginton, a lawyer with Orrick LLP who provides legal counsel to Stewards, thought, “We need to be chanting, sell to us, because we have the legal tools to do this.”
The legal tool Wigginton was referring to — a cooperative — is not a new concept. Anyone with an REI membership or who has watched the Hulu hit “Only Murders in the Building” is familiar with it. But although cooperative structures have been used for nearly a century as a vehicle for fan ownership of major sports clubs in Europe, they have never been successfully implemented to buy a major sports franchise in the United States. Stewards would like to change that.
Stewards has had discussions with ownership groups from the major professional sports leagues — MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS — among others, about a fan-owned cooperative potentially purchasing a stake in a franchise. None of those discussions have resulted in a deal, but Wigginton remains optimistic.
“They have told me that they have considered fan ownership, but they don’t know how to do it,” Wigginton said.
Stewards aims to give owners a path. The idea the group proposes is relatively straightforward. Under U.S. law, a cooperative is a for-profit entity in which the member-owners all have equal stakes and are rewarded shares of the profits based on what they contribute to its overall success. Because no one person owns a majority share, cooperatives can accommodate an almost unlimited number of member-owners.
While Stewards ultimately would like to see a fan cooperative own a sports team outright, it recognizes a cooperative buying a minority stake in a franchise is more realistic at the moment. A minority-stake cooperative would allow owners to quickly raise large infusions of cash through participating fans making relatively small buy-ins, like $100 or $200 apiece, but still maintain majority control of their team. It also could open pathways for owners to create deeper relationships with their fan bases.
And, with the use of Web 3.0 technology developed surrounding Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), there are no geographical limits for how far that fan base can stretch. With the DAO technology, the different cooperative members can be located anywhere in the world and instantly make contributions to the cooperative and have access to the cooperative’s benefits.
“It allows that local regional group to say we can now let anybody in from across the world because we all are required to play by the same rules because that’s what the technology forces,” Stewards principal and entrepreneur Sean O’Brien said.
Stewards would be compensated based on the money raised by cooperatives it helps set up and in some cases would be paid for running day-to-day operations, according to O’Brien. The company is working on deals involving this structure in a number of industries including clean energy, but feels sports is a perfect fit for this type of group ownership because fans are already so passionate about their teams.
Wigginton believes sports owners would be interested in this structure because it rewards fans the more that they participate in the cooperative, whether that would be through purchasing tickets, concessions, merchandise, etc. Members of a cooperative can also be rewarded for providing services that help the organization succeed (otherwise known as “patronage”), which in the sports world could include things like interacting with the team online, recruiting a new season ticket holder, running a fan supporter group or even tending to the playing field.
A certificate for one share of stock in the Green Bay Packers purchased in 2011.
On the fan side, the cooperative structure would appeal to those who love the team and want to be more involved with it, Wigginton said. Currently, only one major U.S. sports team is owned by its fans, the Green Bay Packers. The Packers are a non-profit (the NFL no longer allows teams to be owned by a non-profit, but the Packers were grandfathered in), so those fan-shareholders don’t receive any financial returns for their “investment” like they would in a cooperative structure.
But even without those financial incentives, Packers stock has been widely popular among their fans and has helped create a close bond between the fans and their team. The team’s most recent stock sale in 2021-22 raised a reported $64 million. Packers fans, on average, outspend the fans of most NFL franchises, which O’Brien said is proof that fan ownership can positively impact the value of a franchise.
“Green Bay is undoubtedly the smallest market of any (major) professional team in the United States, but every time Forbes values them, they value the brand and the market of the Green Bay Packers as roughly the same size as the Seattle Seahawks,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien also pointed to the German Bundesliga, where virtually every team is at least 50 percent owned by its fans. “The Bundesliga boasts the largest attendance of any league in the world, and that’s because the fans, when they have their ‘fistful of dirt,’ they’re involved,” he said.
Thus far, Stewards leaders say they’ve seen interest from potential fan investors and from ownership groups, but hurdles remain, as ownership groups are wary about whether this type of structure would loosen their control over their teams and open up their financial information to closer scrutiny.
The Green Bay Packers provide a powerful argument for the impact of an invested fan base. (Dan Powers / USA Today)
‘Buy the Broncos’ and the attempt to bring cooperatives to the NFL
Last year, Stewards made a push to introduce the cooperative fan ownership model to the NFL when the Denver Broncos were put up for sale by the Bowlen family following the death of longtime owner Pat Bowlen. The group formed a cooperative called Buy the Broncos. Because the Broncos were going to be sold via a competitive bidding process, Stewards believed it represented a rare opportunity for a fan cooperative to purchase the team because ostensibly the franchise was going to be sold to the highest bidder regardless of that bidder’s connections to other owners in the league.
But, once the bidding process began, Buy the Broncos wasn’t invited into the data room, where the confidential team and league financial data would be shown to prospective bidders, which made it clear they wouldn’t be able to bid for complete ownership. So they turned their attention to selling the idea of being a minority share partner with one of the five bidding groups who were ultimately invited into the bidding process. According to Stewards, Buy the Broncos had fruitful discussions with three of the five finalists, but ultimately they weren’t part of the bid that Rob Walton put together to buy the team outright.
Though the Broncos deal didn’t come to fruition, it did provide a possible blueprint for how the first fan-owned cooperative could buy a stake in a major U.S. sports franchise. The group’s approach to potential suitors was, “Hey, what if we were able to cut down the purchase price by, say, $40 million, and you could pair with this cooperative and a built-in fan base in your attempts to buy the team?”
“If you buy with us, it’s going to be a lot cheaper and you’re going to get a better product in the end because you’re going to have a supercharged fan base,” Wigginton said in describing the pitch.
Former NFL lineman Ben Garland, a principal with Stewards, was part of the Buy the Broncos effort and believes a huge opportunity is waiting for the first team that works with a cooperative.
“Whatever owner actually went and did this would be an absolute hero in their fans’ eyes,” Garland said. “And I think the fans would give back all that much more when they knew they owned a little piece of it.”
Ben Garland (No. 63) spikes the football after a 49ers touchdown during the NFC Championship Game in 2020. He hopes to help make fan ownership a reality in the U.S. (Kyle Terada / USA Today)
O’Brien says the idea of a group of fans trying to buy a team in the U.S. isn’t new, but the model they put together in the Buy the Broncos bid shows that it is more possible than perhaps it seemed in the past.
“Our hope was that it clicked in a lot of people’s minds that the way it currently is, the status quo, doesn’t have to remain,” he said, noting that they received hundreds of emails from people interested in whether the cooperative structure could work to buy pieces of other U.S. sports teams in the wake of the Buy the Broncos bid.
Despite the setback, O’Brien still thinks NFL teams would benefit greatly from a cooperative ownership structure, especially as it relates to the league’s goal of expanding its reach and popularity outside the U.S. He said the ownership bidding groups that Buy the Broncos spoke with were intrigued by the idea that a cooperative could help sell the team to a broader market, especially in Europe.
“I think a lot of these folks looked at it and said this is the way to get the international marketplace not only on our side, but we don’t have to spend the money in marketing to try to make the Broncos the favorite team in Europe,” he said.
Player-owners and the potential influence of a cooperative on team management
The cooperative ownership structure could open an avenue to team ownership for athletes, as well as fans. Under the NFL’s bylaws, there is specific language that allows for current and former players to own teams they play for, and O’Brien notes that they found no language in the bylaws of any of the five major U.S. sports leagues precluding player ownership.
“With the (Buy the) Broncos, we set aside a piece for the players and the coaching staff and the front office and that sort of thing, because if you’re putting your body on the line quite literally in sports, you should have a piece of the action,” O’Brien said. “It creates more loyalty with the players to stay with the team. It motivates them to win because the more they win, the more value that they actually put in their bank account.”
Increasingly, athletes have looked at professional team ownership as a way to invest their money, Garland says. Not every athlete has the capital to invest at the level of Alex Rodriguez, Michael Jordan and other superstars, but a cooperative would give athletes an entry point for ownership at a lower price point.
“What (athletes) are seeing, I think, is two things: One, they’re seeing the astronomical value of teams and they want a piece of that action, and two, they’re looking for creative ways to be paid,” said O’Brien, who pointed to the contract given to Lionel Messi by Inter Miami, which reportedly includes ownership stake options for the soccer superstar.
Garland helped recruit current and former professional athletes as potential investors in the Buy the Broncos cooperative.
“You owe so much of your success to the sport, even the off-field aspects of the leadership, the dedication, the mindset that it’s taught you, all the family values it’s taught you, there’s so many things you owe to the sport. So where else would you want to put your investment or put your time in than being able to be a part-owner?” Garland said. “And that’s one of the things that’s always been out of our reach.”
Players and other employees of the team could be rewarded patronage in the cooperative for the variety of ways that they contribute to the success of the organization — from simply helping the team win games to taking care of the playing field to increasing ticket sales. How “contributing to the success of the franchise” is defined can be determined in the bylaws of the cooperative.
While the members of the cooperative would get a piece of the team’s profits and the pride of ownership, as a minority share owner, they wouldn’t get a final say in how the team is run. Ultimately, if a cooperative owns 10 percent to 20 percent of a team, the majority owner will still be able to set the budget, control who is hired and fired in the front office, approve player contracts and trade offers, and even move the team.
“We don’t want a controlling aspect. We want that minority ownership,” Garland said. “We’re really not affecting a lot of the day-to-day business. And I wouldn’t want that as a player anyways. You want the best of the best, which is what we have for the most part from the coaches and the GMs making the decisions that truly impact the plays on and off the field.”
But Garland added there are many other team-related decisions part-owners could have input on that wouldn’t significantly impact the day-to-day aspects of running the team, such as which uniforms a team might wear for a given game or how to direct charitable funds.
Though ultimately a team’s majority owner would still have the final say on any major change to the team structure — including any potential relocation decisions — Wigginton says the cooperative could negotiate a “put-right” that would provide members with compensation if the team relocates. Of course, that would be little solace to those fans who were so passionate about their team that they were willing to spend money to fund it. On the other hand, a majority owner looking to move a team when it has a strong fan-owned cooperative as a minority owner could have a tough time justifying the move by telling the public that there weren’t enough fans in the region to support the team.
The challenges of finding the first
Oakland fans, and those who support their message, have protested against A’s ownership at the Coliseum and other ballparks this season. (Darren Yamashita / USA Today)
Finding that first ownership group willing to make the move, O’Brien said, will be the key.
“Our perspective is, look, if we can do this with one team, then that opens up the floodgates for every owner to really say I’ve got to consider this for my own team,” he said.
O’Brien looks at the current situation with the A’s as the perfect example of a franchise that would benefit from allowing a fan cooperative to own a minority share in the team.
“They would stay in Oakland because they would become, first off, possibly Northern California’s favorite team. But they might also become the most beloved MLB team in the world because now everybody who’s a baseball fan across the globe can have a little slice of the Oakland A’s,” he said. “There are a bunch of really great studies, Columbia Business School, etc., that show that when you give people a little bit of ownership, they spend way more and they’re way more loyal.”
None of the ownership groups have ultimately decided to bite on inviting in a fan-owned cooperative, and the roadblocks to getting to a “yes” remain significant. Given how closely major U.S. pro sports leagues guard the confidentiality of their teams’ financials and the inner workings of their leagues, it’s not surprising these leagues have been hesitant to let fans have a stake in their businesses.
Stewards has attempted to stave off some of those concerns by ensuring that the team’s financials would remain confidential through both the purchase process and once the cooperative owned a stake in the team. Cooperative board members would sign non-disclosure agreements and would use third parties to assess how to value the items cooperative members would buy like tickets and merchandise that would be eligible for a rebate.
“You can’t do fan ownership unless the financials stay confidential to some degree, and you appeal to (the owners’) pocketbook,” Wigginton said.
One of the biggest challenges will be getting past the gatekeepers of ownership for these leagues, who have generally been uninterested in deviating from the norm. A potential strategy is to get multiple owners from the same league interested in the cooperative structure, which might put pressure on the leagues to allow a cooperative to move forward.
“We are having these conversations with ownership groups, not with the leagues themselves to this point, but with owners who are interested in engaging fans at a deeper level,” Wigginton said.
A path forward could come from minor-league soccer. The owners of the Oakland Roots and Soul minor-league soccer clubs recently announced a community funding round that they hope will raise $2 million. Fans 18 years of age or older can buy into the community ownership stake in different tiers.
While O’Brien says the ultimate test will come if a team from one of the five major U.S. leagues sells a stake to a cooperative, having smaller-league teams like the Oakland Roots and Soul as a test case could ease some of the hesitation that the larger-league owners might have.
“One of the biggest questions (team owners have) is, will I lose control in the end? Or, are they going to vote to oust me, all that sort of stuff,” said O’Brien, whose group is not involved in the Roots/Soul effort. “So there’s an unfamiliarity, and I think that that is what a small team could help with, is that it would show people, hey, it’s not scary.”
Garland understands the hesitation that ownership groups have in being the first to embrace this concept, but believes the one that does go first will be rewarded.
“It’s tough to get the first person to be a part of it,” Garland said. “The NFL’s worked and worked well for so long that it’s kind of tough to change that.”
Getting league buy-in remains a significant hurdle for fan-owned cooperatives in domestic sports leagues, but Wigginton believes U.S. business culture will gradually make these structures more common in many brick-and-mortar businesses, including sports franchises. That change may not come in time to keep the A’s in Oakland, but it could change the conversation for the next team that threatens relocation, from “Sell the team” to “Join with us.”
“It’s a paradigm shift,” Wigginton said. “We’re so used to thinking that billionaires run the show that it’s very difficult for us to accept our own power. It’s very difficult for us to say, wow, we can actually do big things. We can actually cooperate.”
(Top photo of A’s fans: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
