Harnessing the Power of Fans Through Crowdfunding

June 10th, 2025

What if community members had a financial and/or decision making interest in their local sports teams? How would partnering with fans impact those teams’ popularity and bottom line? These are questions that more and more teams, especially teams in small- and mid-markets, in the minor leagues, or in emerging sports, are asking themselves. The answer for many has been to conduct a Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) campaign to bring in growth capital and to boost connection with their fan community.

Why sports teams are turning to crowdfunding

Many types of businesses have used crowdfunding to raise capital. Community-centered enterprises, like professional or amateur teams or other businesses with fans, have used this approach to turn their fan base into investors. Some of the crowdfund offerings aim to provide some small return to their fan investors and others are providing return in the form of enhanced fan experiences, perks and/or governance rights. Football (soccer) teams have been at the forefront of using crowdfunding but we have worked or consulted with teams in other sports that are considering crowdfunding campaigns including rugby, cricket, arena football, ultimate frisbee, baseball, and more.

Overwhelmingly, the teams that have conducted successful crowdfund offerings have noted the positive impacts including enhanced connection to their fans, higher attendance, increased sale of team merchandise, and the benefit of having hundreds, or even thousands, of fan owner-evangilists for the team further increasing the fan base. See some examples of fan-ownership campaigns below.

Success Stories

US Football Teams:

PathLight Law’s first sports crowdfunding campaign was for the trailblazers at Chattanooga Football Club in 2019. We believe this was the first Reg CF fan ownership campaign and first US soccer team to offer true ownership (and voting rights) to its community. This offering was conducted on the Wefunder platform. Chattanooga FC raised over $872,759 and onboarded over 3200 fan owners.
Detroit City Football Club followed in 2020 with their own fan ownership campaign. DCFC raised $1,485,000 from 2708 investors (with a little help from Detroit native Iggy Pop as their featured investor).

International Football Clubs:

Pathlight structured the Caledonian Braves, a “wee Scottish football club” to be eligible for Reg CF which helped them raise $2,746,186 from 8931 investors worldwide in an offering that closed in April 2025.
Our client, Carrick Rangers, a Northern Ireland team, has an ongoing offering that has raised over $300,000 from over 700 fans.
Pathlight also assisted NK Tabor, located in Slovenia, to structure its current campaign that has so far raised over $574,000 with 1200 fan investors.
Another client, Fan Owned Club, a fan ownership model for Austria’s FC Pinzgau Saalfelden (FCPS) and a fan experience marketing company, raised $569,454 from just under 500 investors in 2023.

PathLight’s Hometown Successes:

In the past, Oakland was home to the highest level of professional football, basketball and baseball teams. Each of those teams moved out of the Oakland market with little regard to their loyal fanbases. The fans were not decision makers in these transitions–ownership (mostly a few very wealthy individuals) decided to move the teams to more lucrative markets. Fans felt they had lost the sports teams and communities that they had helped build. Stepping into the void of professional sports teams in Oakland were the Oakland Roots (soccer–incorporated in 2018 by our firm) and the Oakland Ballers (baseball).

Both of these teams built their fan bases on community-centered missions and each eventually opened ownership to their fans through Reg CF campaigns.

The Oakland Roots and Soul raised $3,648,437 with the help of over 6300 investors in an offering that ended in February 2025.
The Oakland Ballers recently reported that they have raised over $3 million through an offering ending in April 2025.

Both teams are thriving and have devoted fan-owners.

Fan Investment and a Beer

Teams are not the only businesses with fans at their center. See our recent feature on Rikki’s Bar, the first women’s sports bar in San Francisco. The Rikki’s team raised $425,000 from women’s sports fans before the bar even opened–building on the maxim that “everyone watches women’s sports.” Rikki’s opened on June 11, 2025.

What is Regulation Crowdfunding

When Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) was approved in 2012 as part of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, it was expected to provide small businesses and startups with greater access to capital. This expectation was premised on the theory that by allowing small businesses to take investment from a broad group of investors (often called retail or community investors) and not relying solely on wealthy (accredited) investors or institutional lending, these businesses would not be forced to seek financing that is not aligned with the businesses’ goals or growth strategies.

Reg CF allows businesses to raise up to $5MM–it can be a workable strategy for small and large raises. How much can be raised depends on what type of financial statements the business has generated (GAAP, reviewed, or audited). Besides financial statements, Reg CF requires disclosures on items such as current structure, leadership and ownership, risks to investment in the business, and planned uses of the funds raised. Reg CF is a public offering (advertising and solicitation permitted) but it must be listed on a licensed Reg CF portal and that portal is permitted to charge a success fee on the amount of funds raised.

To learn more about Reg CF, see our downloadable resource.