Results
Sample description
Respondents ranged from 16 to 68 years old (mean = 35 years) and were predominantly (96%)
male. The majority were UK residents, though 18% came from other European nations and 14%
from North America (14%).
Seventy-one percent of respondents joined MyFC before the plan to purchase EUFC was
announced in November 2007, though just 23 (4.6%) were EUFC fans before the club was finally purchased by MyFC. Ninety-one percent claimed to support another team as well as
EUFC; predominantly English Premier League or Football League teams. However the nature of
this support for other teams tended towards the passive, with 57% having not attended any home
games in the most recent season. Active support for EUFC was weak, with under 10% attending
5 or more matches in the 2007/08 season though, of those who claimed to support another team,
33% would now support EUFC if they played that other team.
The most popular primary motivation for joining MyFC was the uniqueness of the project (50%),
followed by the desire to take part in democracy in football (18%) and curiosity (12%). Threequarters
felt that MyFC had met expectations regarding their primary reason for joining.
However, at the time of the survey, only 52% were anticipating renewing their membership -
eventually, of the 319 members for whom we had subsequent renewal information, 62% did
renew. A series of chi-square tests did not find evidence to reject the null hypotheses of no
association between any study variable and the presence of actual renewal data.