Giving the World Game Back to the World

Or: Democratising Football

I'm not a football club owner. Not even a manager. I was once a high school football player. So the following comments are from an IT point of view; I have no experience running a football club or much else for that matter.

Recently Liverpool FC hasn't been playing too well, and usually mangement is to blame. In this particular case it's ownership ... a big legal battle abrews.

This raised some questions in my mind:

• what is ownership?
• how is it registered / controlled / enforced?
• how can a suburb 'own' a football club?

Thinking about the last question I had an idea: put the ownership in the hands of the fans ... all of them ... millions ... around the world.

How?

Inputs	Processes	Outputs
money	acquire cash make offer to buy if offer accepted then purchase and manage	ownership and management of Liverpool FC

STEP 1:

This could be tricky, especially for a new business paradigm. For a football club with such a large and enthusiastic fan base it seems obvious to ask the fans to buy in and control their own club. But why would they trust me to take their money and do the right thing. Escrow. Who would be the trusted independent third party?

• Probably a national bank - keen to store money, and probably in for a cut of fees
• escrow.com
• FIFA

So, arrange a multi-million dollar escrow account. Advertise and get contributions from fans - maybe $2 each for an owner share and voting rights. One possible problem is a conglomerate purchasing a large slice of shares and taking control of the club - but how is that different from the current situation?

A website can link escrow funds to usernames, showing contributions raised and a countdown clock until offer will be made. The website could be used to blog ongoing issues and developments, and direct interested contributors to the escrow arrangement.

STEP 2:

Take the escrow money and offer to purchase the club. (How complicated can it be?) What UK foreign ownership laws apply? Probably need a business manager and some lawyers happening here.

STEP 3:

If offer is not accepted one of two things can happen:

• all escrow funds can be returned to contributors
• escrow can be extended, contributors can confirm their offer or retrieve their funds; more funds can be contributed before next offer is made

The choice of action could be left in the hands of the contributors using online polling.

If offer is accepted take the escrow funds and purchase the club - more lawyers?

Now the fun begins - escrow contributors become share owners, and can partake in management decisions via online polling. Choice of managers, players, venue construction, whatever it is that FC owners do. All in the hands of the fans - they can select and prioritise issues online. Management fees would probably apply to execute share owner decisions.

Once the club is back in the black, profits could be returned to the share owners in a manner of their personal choice.

Advantages:

Fans become share owners; they can influence the direction of their beloved club, and maybe make some money.

Disadvantages:

Would take a bit of trust and a lot of money to setup; and requrie a good management team to execute share owner decisions.

Let me know ...

1. Could this work?
2. Would you buy into a club?
3. Should FIFA want to manage such a system, and give the world game back to the world?

Don't Blink

Listening to Security Now 263 this week Steve Gibson of GRC discussed Blink, a 'new' form of contactless smart credit card technology. Although this has been around since 2005, it's probably only becoming more common now, and hence a major security issue, as current cards expire and are replaced.

Steve described it as "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. I'm not kidding."

Basically it's an RFID on your credit card so you can pass your card close to an in-store RFID scanner to make a purchase, instead of having to go to the inconvenience of manually 'swiping' and then having to pick up a pen and physically touch a piece of paper. 'It makes purchasing so much easier!'

Of course, this was developed prior to the current financial crisis, so marketers might not be so keen to tell people to go buy everything on credit.

A security concern that Steve discusses is the possibility of blink skimmers, a 'bad guy' walking around through shopping malls, train stations, and other crowded public areas with a skimming device, getting within inches of your wallet and skimming $25 from your blink credit card in seconds. The skimmer would leave a transaction trail, but could use offshore credit accounts to mask the trail, and hide in a foreign jurisdiction (maybe Nigeria!).

Alternatively, the skimmer might seek to not leave a $25 transaction trail, but instead steal the identity of the card itself, thus leading to credit card fraud on a grander scale. Chase bank state that 3DES symmetric encryption is used during the RFID negotiation and transaction. All you need is the shared key ... a good hacker should be able to determine that key using a bot-net in a couple of years. How long will these cards be around? Can they dynamically change keys?

Some links about the blink contactless card:

• http://www.chaseblink.com/faq.asp - the official blink page at Chase Bank
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nOtFsH9rbI - media reception to blink
• http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-management/blink3.htm - how blink security works
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_smart_card - a general outline of contactless smart cards
• http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/4206464 - a trick to keeping your RFID devices safe in your wallet (using ... Al Foil!)

So, if you get an RFID on your next credit card / passport / library card, what would you do?