Underdog Stories / Football history
How Centro Storico Lebowski Became a Supporter-Owned Club
How did Centro Storico Lebowski become supporter-owned? Teenagers who backed a losing Florence side built a club where each member has one vote.
By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · October 21, 2026
On November 6, 2004, a group of teenagers went to the wrong football ground. By the time they reached the right one, AC Lebowski was three goals down. They could not tell which shirts belonged to their team. They sang anyway.
Centro Storico Lebowski became supporter-owned in two steps. In July 2010, those supporters founded a new club after the old one could no longer continue. In September 2018, they turned it into a sports cooperative. Members could buy shares, while each member got one vote, however many shares they held.
How did Centro Storico Lebowski become supporter-owned?
The teenagers had come to watch AC Lebowski, an amateur side in Florence’s lowest local division. Its players were friends who named their team after The Big Lebowski. The shirts were gray and black. By the supporters’ own account, they were the cheapest they could find.
There was no glory to borrow. On that first day, AC Lebowski lost 3-0 to Laurenziana. Chris Horwedel tells the story in the Why We Love This Club episode “Centro Storico Lebowski — They Sang Anyway.” He notes that the score stayed the same after the teenagers arrived. They later liked to say they had drawn their half.
Some players thought the newcomers were mocking them. Fair enough. A crowd singing for a side that usually lost must have sounded like a setup. The supporters kept coming back, with flags and songs learned in part from Florence’s bigger football culture around Fiorentina.
That went on for six seasons. The club was still small, and its fans were still loud. By then, though, the relationship was real. They knew the players. They knew what it took to get people to a match where a win was far from certain. When AC Lebowski could no longer carry on, they already had a group willing to try running a club.
Why did the fans found a new club in 2010?
The supporters founded Centro Storico Lebowski in July 2010. Centro Storico means historic center. It points back to Piazza d’Azeglio, the Florence square where the group had formed. The name marked a home even while the team had to rent places to play.
The badge was the easy part. Players had to be found, and fees paid. Someone still had to handle the jobs that do not get a song from the stand, and Horwedel describes the shift as moving from supporting a team to taking responsibility for one.
The founders also had a clear reason to share that responsibility. They had seen amateur clubs rely on one president’s money. If that person left or ran short, the club could shrink or disappear. Lebowski’s answer was to ask many people to give what they could, then keep any one person from buying control.
There is a temptation to make the founding sound planned from the first whistle in 2004. The supporters’ own account is funnier. Looking back ten years later, one of them wrote that even the people who were there disagreed about why they started going. They had become owners without setting out to be owners.
How does one member, one vote work at CS Lebowski?
The club began as a supporter-run association. On September 27, 2018, it became a sports cooperative, giving its shared ownership a firmer structure. A share was priced at €25 when the change was announced. Buying more shares did not buy more votes.
The rule is simple: one member, one vote. Lebowski’s statute gives each member a single vote regardless of the size of their stake. The club also says profits cannot be divided among members, and its rules are meant to stop a takeover. A wealthy fan can help pay for things. That fan cannot become the whole club.
“They started singing anyway.”
Members meet monthly to talk through club business. That can include the next shirt or how to fund the ground. The club says its membership has passed 2,000, spread across five continents. People far from Florence can follow meetings remotely, though distance makes the everyday work fall more heavily on those nearby.
Democracy still needs a budget. It needs somebody to prepare for a match, answer messages and clean up afterward. Those jobs are less stirring than a terrace full of flags. They are also where the ownership claim gets tested. A member has a say; the club needs members willing to lend a hand.
How far did the supporter-owned team climb?
The new men’s team started in Terza Categoria, the third and lowest of Italy’s local Categoria divisions. It won that league, then Seconda Categoria and Prima Categoria. By 2018, it had reached Promozione, the sixth tier. The supporters had built a club that could keep moving up without handing it to a patron.
A provincial cup final in 2013 gave them an earlier sign. Lebowski beat Barberino 2-1. The match mattered because the same people who had once struggled to find the right ground had organized a team capable of winning a trophy.
After a later league title, Horwedel recounts a scene from the supporters’ history: the players ran into the crowd. The usual pitch invasion went the other way. There were still hard calls to make about coaches and results, often among friends who worked together off the field. A full terrace could celebrate a win. It could not choose the midfield.
In 2024, Lebowski reached the regional Promozione cup final at Florence’s Stadio Gino Bozzi. Thousands came. Antella ’99 scored in extra time and won 1-0. The loss stung, as it should. The crowd also showed how far the club had come from the afternoon when its first supporters were not sure which team was theirs.
What does Lebowski’s football school do?
In 2015, Lebowski opened a football school in San Frediano, in a public garden at the center of a fight over proposed property development. The club wanted children to have an affordable place to play there. Its account now describes a school with hundreds of boys and girls, with youth teams for those who want to continue.
The women’s side has played in Serie C, Italy’s national third division. The club has girls’ teams and women’s five-a-side football, too. It says it was the first sports club in Tuscany to enter an all-girls team in the youngest “Piccoli Amici” age group. More than 60 girls and women have been registered across its teams.
Those teams are part of the ownership story. A club built for supporters has to decide who gets to take part before anyone is old enough to buy a share. The children at the garden are not an extra audience for the men’s team. They have a place to play.
Where does CS Lebowski play now?
For years, the team rented grounds in and around Florence. It played at Paganelli and Galluzzo, then spent a long stretch at Tavarnuzze, while the club’s name stayed tied to the historic center even as match days took supporters across the city and beyond.
Its teams later gathered at La Trave, a municipal sports site in Florence that the club is developing with UISP, an Italian sport-for-all organization. Lebowski describes it as the home it hopes to keep building. Having a regular ground gives the football school and the other teams room to meet the people who come to watch.
It also gives everyone a place to do the less photogenic work. At La Trave, a member can vote on a shirt and then help pay for the one the meeting chose. Someone has to put it through the wash.
The full episode of Why We Love This Club is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.
People also ask
When was Centro Storico Lebowski founded?+
Supporters founded Centro Storico Lebowski in July 2010 after spending six seasons following AC Lebowski, a separate amateur team in Florence. Their first recorded match as that team’s supporters was on November 6, 2004. Centro Storico Lebowski became a sports cooperative in September 2018.
Can anyone buy control of Centro Storico Lebowski?+
The cooperative is designed to prevent that. When it announced the change in 2018, a share cost €25, but holding more shares did not give a member more votes. Each member has one vote under the club’s statute. The club also says members cannot divide its profits among themselves.
What league has Centro Storico Lebowski reached?+
The men started in Terza Categoria and won three league titles on their way up to Promozione, Italy’s sixth tier. Their climb was gradual. They also won a provincial cup final in 2013 and reached a regional cup final in 2024, which they lost to Antella ’99 in extra time.
Does Centro Storico Lebowski have women’s and youth teams?+
Yes. The club opened its football school in San Frediano in 2015 and has since built boys’ and girls’ youth teams. Its senior women’s side has played in Serie C. The club also runs women’s five-a-side football and says more than 60 girls and women are registered across its teams.