Crowd funding has taken the front seat in recent times where businesses, artists, developers and other entities seek donations/funds to fuel their ideas and other propositions from investors and/or their supporters. Crowd Funding has so far raised $5.1 billion worldwide. Internet has crawled into our lives and Social Media has reaped its benefits. We are highly dependent on Social media and it has affected our lives greatly by helping us communicate with both – people whom we know and those whom we do not. Ideas, innovations, artists have gained a lot from the same as they do not have to know someone personally to gain their support in their quest. The social media platform is one which Crowd Funding has been the most successful on, as it not only helps in gaining monetarily but also helps in gaining attention across the globe.
Football also falls under the radius of those benefitted by crowd funding. Recently, Portsmouth FC has been successful in raising £250,000 in order to create new facilities for their youth team. Darren Anderton, Joel Ward, Asmir Begovic, Gary O’Neil, and Marc Wilson are a few players that have graduated from the Portsmouth Academy but the club has suffered in terms of keeping their best prospects. As a result, they felt that they were failing to provide complete education. Portsmouth used the Crowd Funding website Tifosy, to raise a significant amount in order to tackle the aforementioned problem and in this pursuit they successfully raised the highest amount for any club in UK.
Another example of how Crowd Funding has helped a club is that of Grimsby Town. They lost the last match of the 2014-15 Season to Bristol Rovers on penalties, losing out on a chance to secure promotion to The Football League for the third time in three years. The Mariners Trust that is in-charge of the club chose to be positive and decided to give the club a boost by setting up a Crowdfunder campaign. This crowd funding operation was set up in order to secure funds for the manager which would help him sign new players. The campaign which aimed to get £20,000 from its fans and supporters ended up raising £110,000. The donations included fans of all kinds, from businessmen who donated £2500 to a little boy who donated his pocket money of £4 for the cause.
The stories of Portsmouth and Grimsby Town are those we saw in England, we have seen similar cases in USA where NFL (National Football League – American Football) team Seattle Seahawks were able to raise a million dollars to re-sign a quarter back for their team. New England Patriots, another NFL team were able to raise enough funds through Crowd funding to resign a quarter back for their team. These examples are those of teams and clubs abroad, let us have a look at something more local. SEPT is a Kerala based NGO which holds the title of being India’s only Football Nursery. Established in 2004, SEPT has been the production house of young football talent from Kerala. It aims to become the premier breeding ground for football in the country, they plan to do so by providing training of international standards and providing necessary amenities to talented children from sub-urban, rural and tribal areas of the country. The NGO has set up 52 centres across 13 districts that help over 2000 kids every year. The NGO has helped the kids develop their football skills along with providing them basic education. SEPT nurtures talent between the age of 8 – 14 and has been doing so successfully for the past decade, they have success stories ranging from district levels to international levels. 11 players represented India whereas several students won scholarships at different prestigious institutes ranging from Tata Football Academy to Celtic Academy. The NGO has helped its students keep the dream of “playing football professionally” alive. SEPT has touched the lives of thousands of less privileged kids and unlike most of the academies in India, SEPT has been willing to adapt to modern methods of crowd funding. We see such passion and affection for the game abroad, the question is can we witness the same in our Country? Will Indian clubs also find their names amongst successful Crowd Funding campaign beneficiaries? To find out more details on SEPT click on the following links:
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