Caledonian Braves: How a small Scottish football club is chasing a 'Wrexham'-sized dream

CNN
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Hit TV shows such as 'Ted Lasso' and 'Welcome to Wrexham', a documentary series detailing the ownership of a Welsh football club by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, have pushed soccer into the mainstream. It's firmly entrenched in American pop culture and is introducing soccer to a new audience in the United States. And overseas, Chris Ewing is quickly discovering.

Every night, Ewing receives an email informing him that a fan far away, such as Los Angeles, has just invested in his small Scottish soccer club, the Caledonian Braves.

“Ten minutes later, someone from Australia invested in the club and I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe it,'” club founder Ewing told CNN Sports.

Located in the leafy suburbs of Motherwell, a town about 20 kilometers south-east of Glasgow, Caledonian Braves play in the Scottish Fifth Division with a team of mostly amateur players in a ground that can accommodate just 500 fans. .

But despite its small home base, Ewing's vision to create a fan-owned club steeped in values ​​of diversity and community, and with ambitions of entering the Scottish Premier League, is one of 1,000 fans around the world. The project has attracted more than $300,000 in investment from more than 1,000 owners. This exceeds the annual running costs of about $58,000.

These owners include NBA players, NBA coaches, players association executives, and soccer players from the U.S. National Women's Super League (NWSL). Investors from 49 U.S. states have endorsed the proposal, with Wyoming being the only state on the list.

“Most people would think of a community club as a local community tied to a specific geography,” Ewing says.

“But today, with the internet and social media and apps that encourage fan engagement, I feel like community can be global, just common ideals and shared values.”

For Mujtaba Elguda, one of the club's main investors, visiting Scotland and learning about the country's history was an “amazing” experience, he recalls.

Elguda, who was more accustomed to basketball than soccer, served as team development manager for the Golden State Warriors when they won the NBA title in 2022 and is currently part of the National Basketball Players Association executive team.

But “there's nothing like a good game of football,” Elguda told CNN Sport when he braved frigid Scottish weather to visit the club in February.

“It was amazing to not only witness the intensity of it, but also to be able to even hear the different slang that the audience was throwing around there,” he added.

Elguda was intrigued by the story and spirit of the Braves last year when he stumbled across them on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Along with his long-time investment partner, serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nasir Chris, he set out to assemble a group of investors who understood both the growth potential of soccer and the importance of community.

Together, they engaged NWSL's Kansas City Current stars Elizabeth Ball, Kristen Hamilton, and Hailey Mace with their extensive soccer knowledge, and Boston Celtics performance coach Isaiah Covington also shared their thoughts on social media. I introduced him to Ewing, who noticed the topic of the club.

“I didn't grow up around football,” Covington recalled. “But over the years, I've had a lot of nieces and nephews, and that's all they play with now.”

Although not yet as popular as American football or basketball, soccer is the fastest growing sport in the United States and the most popular sport for adults under 30. In high school sports alone, soccer has increased him by nearly 300%. For the past 40 years.

“You know, all these big names own football clubs. It's like a new wave that people are riding,” Hamilton says.

“So I think this was a really huge, powerful movement in the United States to say, 'Look, we can't own an NFL team, but we can own a small football team.'

With the idea of ​​helping many small investors achieve their big ambitions, the Braves embody the American entrepreneurial spirit, Chris told CNN Sport.

“How do you take this new thing that no one has ever heard of, this little club with big ambitions to become a global franchise, and inject resources and community and talent into it and really accelerate it at scale?” he says.

As more and more money flows into football, the rift between fans and owners has become a chasm for many clubs. These two groups are often at odds in the battle for the soul of football. The fans represent the history and tradition of the sport, and the owners believe they will turn the club into a commercial entity or vehicle for washing the sport.

Against this backdrop, fan ownership has emerged as a kind of utopian panacea for some fans.

This is not the first time the Braves have pursued this goal, although it remains an unusual model in Britain, particularly in the English Premier League and Championship, where clubs operate at huge losses.

Since they were incorporated as a limited liability company in 2022, Hwang agrees with that and they plan to file their first financial results in October. Ewing founded a previous attempt at this ownership model from 2019 to 2021, but dissolved it before trading, he said.

In Scotland, fans have become majority owners in recent years at top clubs such as St Mirren, Motherwell and Heart of Midlothian, while several other clubs, including Rangers and Celtic, count fans as minority owners. There is.

Meanwhile, the 50+1 concept of fan majority ownership is deeply ingrained in German football culture, giving fans a greater say in club management. Mr. Ewing said he would eventually like to imitate it.

But fan ownership isn't easy. That is, figuring out how to organize hundreds of opinions into some kind of coherent opinion.

Ewing, who is not paid by the club, admits it will be difficult to meet expectations. “People think they can just say, 'Okay, let's do x, y, and z.'”

“Even with the best of intentions, it may not be that easy, but I think the important thing for me is that people like the highs and the lows.”

The Braves have an app and a Discord channel that helps foster this sense of community and allows fan owners to have a say in the direction of the club. The fans chose the club's name, logo and the name of its ground, Alliance Park.

Investors are finding that giving fans ownership over their teams has proven to be contagious.

“Every time I post about the Braves, people DM me and say, 'Who is this team? How can I get involved?'” Ball says.

Such projects are part of Edasports, the original business Ewing founded in 2011 to give promising young soccer players, primarily from France, a place to hone their skills and learn English. It's very different from the academy.

Over time, the academy's first team went on to play in the Scottish Football League, before splitting off in 2019 to form the Caledonian Braves.

Now, as the Braves continue to grow, their goal is to advance through the league in a sustainable way that will keep the club afloat for years to come.

“[We're]flipping the narrative that you don't have to be Tom Brady or Matthew McConaughey or Ryan Reynolds,” Ewing says. “You can be anyone from anywhere and own your own football club for just 10 pounds (about $13).”