November 10, 2026
Bohemian F.C. (An Cumann Peile Bóihéamach) is a fan-owned football (soccer) club based in Phibsborough, north Dublin. In a football world dominated by super-rich investors and global corporations, the Bohemians - or Bohs for short - have very deliberately bucked the trend and gained a reputation for progressive politics which has extended far beyond their locality. The Democracy Collaborative Fellow, Ben Sellers, writes about the power of aligning sports organizations with Community Wealth Building.
A progressive club
In recent years the Bohemian F.C. and its fan base have taken visible stances on Palestine and anti-fascism, and the club has done a roaring trade selling football shirts bearing (amongst other things) calls to join a trade union and the slogan, ‘Refugees Welcome.’ Greta Thunberg was recently pictured in the special edition ‘Fontaines D.C.’ Bohemians shirt on the Flotilla to Gaza.
This approach has carved out a very central place for Bohemians amongst a small band of football clubs across Europe who reach beyond their traditional fan base, and has engaged progressive football fans more broadly across the continent and globally.
The club could have been satisfied with that, but the history of the Bohs demanded that they also use football as a ‘force for good’ in the community around Dalymount Park, their stadium in Phibsborough.
Bohemian Cooperatives and Building Community Wealth
Bohemian Cooperatives emerged out of the Bohs climate justice work and their long-standing history as a fan-owned club. Via the Spark project, set up in 2021, they’ve built a foundation for community-led action and collaboration.
The team, led by Seán McCabe, the club’s Head of Climate Justice and Sustainability, have embraced Community Wealth Building as a way of reclaiming the economic power that has been taken out of the hands of working-class communities in Dublin over many decades:
“Community Wealth Building is an economic model grounded in the simple principle that communities should hold a real stake and have a real say over the economy shaping their lives. Instead of allowing wealth and power to flow outwards, it focuses on retaining and circulating wealth locally, by shifting ownership and control of assets into the hands of communities.”
Earlier this year, the Bohs announced their plans for a three-year ‘Building Community Wealth’ strategy, developed with the support of Community Foundation Ireland. As part of the plan, they are establishing a new not-for-profit to lead the development of a community wealth building ecosystem in Dublin. Bohemians’ mission is a clear statement of intent:
“To build a democratic, community-owned economy that tackles climate change and inequality together – creating decent, union-friendly jobs, lowering household costs, and keeping wealth circulating locally through cooperative enterprises and fair public procurement.”
The aim of the Building Community Wealth Strategy is ambitious, but rooted in the local community in Phibsborough:
“We will have succeeded if, by 2028, Dublin has a credible community-led platform for community wealth building and a practical mechanism for developing enterprises and institutions that allow workers, communities and the planet to thrive.”
Why a football club?
A football club may seem an unlikely place for this work. However, as representatives of the club explained in a recent piece in Philanthropy Ireland:
“Football clubs carry deep trust and provide a place of belonging, especially in working-class communities often missed by traditional environmental campaigns. Football specifically, and sport more generally, holds cultural power and broad networks that make it a powerful vehicle for shaping a fairer, more sustainable future.”
Four days in Dublin
The Bohs launched their Community Wealth Building strategy over four days at the end of April and the beginning of May 2026. On Thursday the 30th of April, President of The Democracy Collaborative, Joe Guinan, gave the closing address at the official launch event at Dublin’s Mansion House, where he lauded Bohemian FC for its “profoundly important and catalytic role” and highlighted the power of a ‘bottom up’, democratic response to poverty and exclusion:
“The most exciting thing to me about the democratic economy is this: that it is not some pipedream but already emerging all around us – a spontaneous response to social pain by people in some of our poorest communities. (…) Traditional policies and approaches have demonstrably failed them, and as a consequence, more and more people are beginning to turn to genuine economic alternatives in which new wealth is built collectively and from the bottom up.”
The launch included a number of roundtables with local political representatives, community organization, and the trade union movement, laying out the Bohemians’ plans and exploring the potential of Community Wealth Building across the city.
Seán McCabe and the Bohemian Cooperatives, posing with TDC co-founder Ted Howard, Senior Fellow for the Promotion of CWB in the UK and Preston City Council leader Matthew Brown, TDC President Joe Guinan and TDC Global Lead for CWB, Neil McInroy, April 2026
Joe was joined by a delegation of The Democracy Collaborative colleagues: our Global Lead on Community Wealth Building, Neil McInroy; TDC Board member, Professor Martin O’Neill; our Senior Fellow for the Promotion of CWB in the UK and Preston City Council leader, Matthew Brown; and TDC co-founder, Ted Howard.
On May 1, the primary focus was on a Civil Society Summit on Community Wealth Building and Just Transition, attended by the President of Ireland, Uachtarán na hÉireann, Catherine Connolly and co-hosted by Friends of the Earth and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. President Connolly said, in her speech:
“Along with its mission and vision, that Strategy sets out a three-year plan for establishing a community wealth building ecosystem in Dublin. It advocates for a fairer economy, while also building the institutional foundations, partnerships, and enterprise pathways to make that economy real … We are witnessing rising inequality, climate and biodiversity breakdown, and a widening sense that too many people feel shut out of the decisions that shape their lives. At such a moment, incremental change will not suffice.”
Later that evening, the Bohemians hosted Derry City in the League of Ireland’s Premier Division, and the new visitors to Dalymount Park were able to experience what makes the football club so special, even if the three points eluded the Bohs on this occasion.
Then, on May 2, the Boh’s strategy for ‘Building Community Wealth’ was taken into the streets around Phibsborough, with a well-attended, vibrant community day. Engagement of the local community in practice is vital to the whole project.
‘Dublin has its vital spark’
As Neil McInroy pointed out, the launch days offered a powerful reminder of the many and varied starting points for Community Wealth Building as transformative change.
Government strategy and plans is one way (and it is needed), but also key is the energy from below – the sparks.
The launch in May was very much the beginning of the story in Dublin. Clearly, there is a lot of work ahead, building the foundations for a sustainable, concrete, and practical Community Wealth Building strategy. As Neil wrote in his blog on the launch events in Dublin:
“For Community Wealth Building to take root in Dublin, it must become part of how Dublin City Council thinks and acts strategically, and it must take real and concrete form – beyond what they have already tentatively advanced through existing work on Community Wealth Building. Moving forward CWB needs to be seen not as community development but as core to economic development and to overall economic policy and strategy. (…) Without this anchoring, progress will remain partial and contingent, and risks being subsumed in the wider economy of ongoing extraction and financialization (…) Dublin has its vital spark. The task now is the hard work and the abiding question – can it safeguard the flame, spread the fire, and scale and amplify to the point where transformation occurs.”
What next?
Since the launch in May, Seán McCabe and his team have been working on the key building blocks of the Bohemian Cooperative Community Wealth Building strategy. The ‘start up’ phase is planned to run until September 2029. That phase will focus on seven key areas of work: governance; education and community participation; policy and systems change; community ownership; monitoring, learning and evaluation; launching a food systems enterprise; and setting up an insurance mutual, with the football club and its cooperative arm at the heart of it. As Seán says:
“Football matters to people, and if you treat it with respect, you can access transformative capacity. Football clubs can be this beating heart of cultural organizing. We need institutions like that so badly, because to transition our world to a safe and secure future for our children and grandchildren, we don't have the time to build these types of institutions and then have those institutions gain the trust of the people.”
Adding Community Wealth Building to the powerful galvanizing force that are sports clubs such as the Bohemians, is truly empowering communities to ask “what if we own the local economy like we own this football club? What could we do then?”