Cappers Buzz

A friend of mine, Rob Jackson, has come up with an interesting idea. Piggybacking off the viral success of the Million Dollar Homepage, Rob has set up a site to solicit donations for the purpose of buying a professional sports franchise:

OwnASportsTeam.com

The gimmick? Owners will have a say in decision making, with the bigger contributors having more say.

Wouldn’t that be the coolest? Imagine having the ability to approve or veto draft picks and trades just by owning a share!

I don’t think Rob has really thought this thru though. This is a bit like the challenge of “open source” software represents to companies like Microsoft. Barrier to entry is low(you can contribute as little as you like), and while no one contributor likely has as much domain knowledge as an owner or GM, the dynamics of the crowd can make up for that. The betting public is largely responsible for accurate betting lines, as linemakers respond daily to public pressure. Open source software runs much of the Internet - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP(known by geeks as the “LAMP” stack) are the backbone of most websites you and I surf every day thanks not just to the programmers but the contributions of the user base too.

But can this model successfully drive the operation of a winning sports franchise? I don’t know that this venture will ever get off the ground, but it would sure be fun to try.