Should the Royals become a Constitutional Monarchy?

Drew Carey is a minority owner, and this is basically his brainchild. From what I understand, that is how they do it for the Spanish clubs FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. The other owners are Joe Roth (Hollywood Producer – majority owner), Adrian Hanauer (who owner the previous Seattle minor league soccer team), and Paul Allen (Microsoft Co-founder).

I also thought about Green Bay, and I think they would have a great shot at making it work since they often sell “stock” to their fans. But, right now, the fans don’t get anything for that stock. Voting rights would be cool. But, I’d rather see it come to the Royals :) .

As far as ownership being reluctant to turn control over to fans, I think it makes perfect business sense. It isn’t just about the money you make for people joining, it’s about all of the money you’ll make because fans are a lot more engaged in the team, especially when times are bad. The ownership could of course veto any decision of the fans (after all, it would still be a monarchy – just with a parliament), they’d just probably piss off a lot of fans if they did. If it wasn’t successful as a business model, you could always undo it. Plus, if the fans don’t approve of the way a GM is doing things, he’s probably going to get fired anyway. This is just a way to give fans the satisfaction of doing the firing. The owner would still control the budget and many other business aspects. I really don’t see a lot of downside for some team to try it out other than change is scary to a lot of people.

I think there is very little risk with letting fans take a “no confidence” on the GM. I think fans are capable of not firing a good GM. They might fire a mediocre one, but I don’t think it is hard to find another mediocre GM to take his place.

Most of the other “big” decisions would simply be placed with (or advised by) a committee which is elected by the fan group (the Sounders call this the “Member Association Council”). Such a council could act with the trust of the fan group and would be privy to any insider information that is needed.

Other decisions like what color shoe laces the team wears and what to name our new cheerleading squad could be made by the whole fan group and are mostly just for fun.

The form of democracy which is almost always used is representative democracy — a republic — not pure democracy (like small town New England town meetings). There’s a big difference between most people having the opportunity to vote for the representatives who make the decisions on the one hand and everyone directly voting on every decision on the other hand. For better or worse, no democratic nation-state on the planet has direct rule by the people, which essentially prevents mob rule. I wonder if the “Alliance” is a smaller group of select fans, or just any fan who wants to be in the alliance. I don’t know that I would want every American voting directly on tax policy; nor do I think I’d want fans directing player personnel moves.

By the way, one of the team names they voted on was “Seattle Republic”. Obviously, they didn’t go with that name. “Sounders” won as a write-in.

i think this theory works better in leagues with a salary cap (or even more controlled environments like MLS). this would restrict the things fans clamor for to a more plausible realm.

Is this idea is not common.

I think its being portrayed as part of world football culture, when in fact there is all of one team in the world (a League Two, which means terrible, English team) that gives fans as much ability as setting a line-up.

If this is nothing more than letting fans get involved in what types of promotions they would like to see, then I don’t see this a meaning anything. Do Sounders fans actually get to do anything?

It might get a little confused with the fact that a lot of European teams are publicly traded companies, but those shareholders have about as much power as any other shareholder of any company has.

will win the World Series every year.

if there were ever any real world, face-to-face meetings between the old school/traditional faction and the new school/advanced stats faction of the Team Council. Good lord. It would make these look like a 2nd grade girls’ slap fight.

You’d best be ready to throw down at the drop of a hat if you’re a politician in Taiwan. Bitches.

than having him not on the team. It’s not like they were successful with Sippio not the #2 WR. I think we underestimate that coaches are also overly emotionally, physically, and mentally invested in their teams/jobs to make good decisions all the time. Most coaches are just as dumb as the average fan—they just stay at their offices longer.

assuming the GM/Coaches had final say, then maybe this would at least find a way for the GM to be obligated to explain why Sippio (for example) isn’t getting the playing time the fans are asking for. it could actually improve fan relations with the team (probably more important for a team with a fan base like the Royals than a team like the Chiefs)