Braves look towards fan ownership
Caledonian Braves owner Chris Ewing has confirmed the Alliance Park club are looking to move towards a fan ownership model.
The Lanarkshire club was formed in 2019, although the club itself existed formerly as Edusport Academy, which Ewing founded.
Scotland’s youngest senior club, they have fans from all over the world thanks to their social media presence and app, which attracts thousands of people.
They are now looking to the future and a fundraising effort is set to be launched for the fan ownership cause.
It’s a model adopted by full-time clubs Motherwell, Hearts, St Mirren, Morton and more, with Ewing believing it could take non-Scottish fans to make it a success at Braves.
He said:“We are in the process of looking to launch a crowdfunder so we can sell part of the club to the fans.
“There’s quite a lot going on behind the scenes here which will hopefully take us to the next level over the next couple of years.
“I am the only guy in Scottish football that actually created his own football club. Others have essentially bought into the club as far as I am aware.
“But there’s only so much I can do alone, and there’s only so much I want to do alone. It’s great to be the owner of a club but it’s also great to share it with people, both the highs and the lows.
“We are a new club born from a French football academy. It’s very new and it’s very left-field. Some people like that, some people dislike it as it is so different and anti-traditional.
“But this crowdfunder would be for the fans to share in everything that’s going on at the club and building a community, whether that’s online or physically around Alliance Park.
“Looking at our own model, would a Motherwell fan for example buy shares in Caledonian Braves? Probably not.
“It’s probably not going to be Scottish fans who buy into this as they have an established club they support.
“But we are going more and more towards fan ownership, and that’s how it should be.”
On the park, boss RickyWaddell already has the base of a squad that will look to build on a fifth tier campaign where they finished 9th out of 18 sides.
Ewing added:“It feels like we are beginning to get a bit of consistency.
“Each season, it feels like in the pre-season we have had to go out and sign a lot of players.This year, we have a good nucleus of a squad and more experience in the Lowland League.
“We know what lies ahead of us and some youth teams have come under the Braves banner. It’s starting to feel more like a club.We have more volunteers, more fans on matchday.
“We have almost 4,000 on the app and we’ve had people signed up from as far as New Zealand.”