Ex-Italy and Chelsea FC footballer and co-founder, Tifosy

You’re involved in a new venture called Tifosy, what is it?
Tifosy is a crowdfunding platform exclusively designed to help football clubs raise funds online for specific projects. We call it “fanfunding” as it leverages a club’s global fanbases. Our mission is to enable everyone to invest in football in a fair and transparent way.

Fans are the backbone of football and we want to give them the opportunity to support their club financially. Clubs have thousands and sometimes millions of passionate and loyal fans, who would love to be able to do their bit to help their club progress and make a real impact. We believe that football clubs who are willing to listen to their fans can realise amazing things.

Why Tifosy?
I’ve been involved with football for many years. Now I’m 51 years old, I’ve got to a point where I feel it is my duty to find ways to make the sport of football better.

I first met Fausto Zanetton, the founder of Tifosy, at a talk at the London Business School and we struck up a friendship based on our mutual love of Italian football and interest in making the game better. When Fausto asked me to get involved with Tifosy, I was very willing to say yes, because I think this is a great cause and creates a win-win scenario.

Tifosy can help football – and football clubs – in two ways. Firstly, to make them financially sustainable and able to compete better on and off the field. Secondly, to strengthen the important relationship between clubs and fans. We don’t want fans to feel they’re simply clients, we want them to feel they have a relationship with their club – that they’re partners.

Connecting fans with their club – does that mean the target market is limited?
Actually one of the things that has surprised us with the campaigns so far is how wide the message has spread and how many contributions have come from unlikely places. We launched a campaign for Portsmouth FC for which contributions came from 39 countries.

Of course, the majority always comes from the core of passionate club fans, but football fans care deeply about the game and will often choose to help out a club in need. Our most recent campaign is for the new club Parma Calcio 1913 which was forced to leave the top flight Serie A and accept a demotion to Serie D – the fourth level of Italian football.

It has already attracted support from more than 40 countries. It just shows how strong ties are in the global football family and how fans can be a force for good.

What are your goals for Tifosy?
Our ambition is to be the number one global sports financing platform and we plan to get there in several stages.

Right now our focus is 100 per cent football and so far we’ve done rewards-based campaigns, where fans give cash in exchange for merchandise or experiences.

The next step will be offering financial products, such as equity and debt, to fund bigger projects and give fans and investors ownership and a return on investment.

Over time we plan to expand beyond our current European focus, and eventually move into other sports.

Of course we’ve set expectations for growth, but it’s important to stress we’re focused on quality, not just numbers; we believe in managed campaigns and delivering success, so we look for worthwhile projects of meaningful size for clubs with an honest, open, sustainable approach to development.

Details: www.tifosy.com