Investing for impact – Esin Rager / FC St. Pauli & samova

Communicorn - Episode 03

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.

Do you want to load external content supplied by Youtube?
With your consent, further personal data will be transmitted to, among others, Google in the USA in order to show you Youtube videos. However, the European Court of Justice has deemed the level of data protection in the USA, measured against EU standards, to be insufficient. There is also the possibility that your data may then be processed by US authorities. If you click on “Yes“, the data will only be passed on for the display of this video. If you click on “Always“, the data is generally passed on when Youtube videos are displayed on our site. For more information, please refer to our Privacy policy.
Listen to the third episode of Communicorn: "Investing for impact – Esin Rager / FC St. Pauli & samova".

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.

Episode 03

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 informationen

The Leuphana Social Innovation Community is driving the sustainable shaping of society by bringing together stakeholders from business, civil society, and politics. Shape the future with us and become part of the community!

Contact

Charlotte von Wulffen