In this particular study, we examine loyalty in an online football brand community,
myfootballclub.co.uk (henceforth “MyFC”), which, in 2008, became the first online brand
community to take control of an association football (soccer) club, when a majority of MyFC’s
(then) 17,000 members voted to pay £600,000 for a 75% stake in Ebbsfleet United Football Club
(henceforth “EUFC”), a small, long-established club in a minor UK League (The Football
Conference, the 5th tier of English football). In this respect, the MyFC online brand community
illustrates how consumer collectives can behave as marketplace actors (Cova et al., 2007). This
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