What if we thought of professional football as a way for everyone to share responsibility? In the third episode of Communicorn, we speak to Esin Rager, an entrepreneur, journalist and vice president of FC St. Pauli, about new financing methods and ways to get involved in football.

How do football and community fit together? Having lived on several continents, Esin brings a global perspective to professional football, combining entrepreneurial thinking with a vision of community and collaboration. Through her tea brand, samova, she has long demonstrated how businesses can embody values such as community, communication and commitment to quality, not just in marketing claims but in their daily practice. She now brings this same mindset to professional sports, advocating for models that treat fans as co-creators.

In the world of professional sports, big investors often dominate the financial landscape. Yet Esin advocates community financing, a model that is uncommon in professional football. She explains how cooperative financing empowers fans by giving them a voice and strengthens the club’s long-term development. It’s not just about funding, it’s about building trust, sharing responsibility, and valuing community involvement. In this episode, we explore how social innovation can affect change even within deeply institutionalized systems and why community should be recognized as a foundational element of forward-looking organizational design.

The podcast is part of the Leuphana Social Innovation Community at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. We want to connect social innovations, social entrepreneurs in an innovation community setting, where we learn from each other, make knowledge and innovative ideas tangible and visible.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction of Esin Rager / samova 

05:51 – Painting the picture: What does community mean for samova?

07:03 – Esin’s theory of change

09:53 – Understanding community financing

16:01 – Understanding collective decision-making

21:25 –Innovation and scaling

30:32 – Game: Enterprise, Impact or Community? 

For more information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/samova-gmbh-&-co-kg/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/fc-st-pauli

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samova_official/

https://www.instagram.com/fcstpauli

Website:

https://samova.net/

https://www.fcstpauli.com/

Contact

Charlotte von Wulffen

Charlotte.wulffen@leuphana.de

Foto

© FC St. Pauli