City of Liverpool FC has been officially confirmed as a supporter-owned football club, marking the next step in its bid to become an established grassroots team to represent the city.
The club’s recognition as a Community Benefit Society (CBS) means people will soon be able to buy memberships to help organisers continue building the new team and its facilities.
If successful, the idea is to emulate the achievements of other fan-run teams such as FC United of Manchester and AFC Wimbledon.
Paul Manning, City of Liverpool FC’s chairman, told JMU Journalism: “The club will be ‘supporter-owned’, which, in effect, means that anyone who becomes a member of the club will hold an annual share and therefore will have a say on how the club is run and how it evolves, with no possibility of ever owning more than one share.
“It also means that the club will forever be owned by its supporters and can never be used as a private enterprise to make money for shareholders. Although our club can legally make profit, the money can only ever be used to develop the club and the local community, and can’t be paid as a dividend.”
The club is confident that they will secure a ground for next season, even though this may mean sharing initially. They expect to have confirmation before Christmas regarding where in the city they will play.
When the team does see the field, they will likely wear purple – the club’s primary colour – alongside gold.
Despite this colour representing a mixture of Everton blue and Liverpool red, Manning cleared up the connection, saying: “From our perspective, COLFC has no past history and no past allegiance to either Everton or Liverpool, only a future. So the merging of the two colours was not really in our thoughts. Purple is the civic colour of Liverpool and so we wanted to use the colour more as a show of civic pride.”
Manning also stated that the club has not set any long-term ambitions just yet, but did admit the city will decide what it becomes, depending on their support.
He added: “If we build the right foundations now and set it off on the right track, carry out the community outreach we plan, and have a successful team on the pitch in season 2016/17, we believe that the city will get behind us and then the club can be anything it wants to be.”