Soccer uses 'Radiohead model' to boost business

London, England (CNN) -- The club's staff just weren't prepared for the crush.

But when you work for Mansfield Town -- an English non-league club that rarely attracts more than a few thousand fans -- a pre-match scrum big enough to delay kick off by 20 minutes and block traffic was the last thing to expect.

More than 7,000 supporters, and reporters from as far afield as Brazil, turned up for the clash against Gateshead at Field Mill last week, not because it was a local derby, nor a top-of-the-table clash. They had a far greater incentive: the club's fans were invited to pay whatever they wanted for a ticket.

"I've been to restaurants abroad that let you pay what you think the meal was worth so we were thinking how can we apply that here?" explained Andrew Perry, chairman of Mansfield Town.

But then Perry got inspiration from an unlikely source, the British rock band Radiohead. The group famously released their last studio album "In Rainbows" online, inviting fans to pay what they wanted for a limited period.

While many downloaded the album for free, according to Radiohead's publisher Warner/Chappell the band made more money through the "Pay What You Want" model than from sales of previous album "Hail to the Thief."

"I download a lot of music and I actually bought 'In Rainbows.' I paid for that. I was happy to pay £5 ($8) for it," admitted Perry. "You get put in the position where you start to think about them, the band, and what they deserve. Why couldn't that work here?"

Translating that business model to the turnstiles has, for one game at least, been a huge success. The match secured the club's biggest crowd in eight years. Their previous home game attracted just 2,800 fans. Perry is not revealing how much money the club made from the bumper turnout, but fans paid anything from 5 cents to $80 for a ticket that would usually cost $25.

Times have been tough for Mansfield Town since relegation to the realms of amateur football. They have seen two TV deals, the bedrock of modern football financing, disappear when two satellite broadcasters who had invested millions of dollars to secure live rights went bust, leaving holes in the finances.

"The collapse [of TV funding] was a wake-up call and you have to say that this is a great idea," said Michael Brunskill of the Football Supporters' Federation. "The clubs are realizing they have to do more to attract fans. They need to find ways to get young people going to the grounds and, once you've found a way to do that, they are hooked for life."

The need to attract and enthuse new fans in testing financial conditions has prompted innovative ideas in other parts of England.

Northampton Town, who play in the fourth tier of English football, recently offered fans a free, week-long holiday in mainland Spain or Tenerife if they renewed their season ticket.

And in 2007 Ebbsfleet United, a team in the same division as Mansfield, was bought by community football Web site MyFootballClub.co.uk. Fans could buy a stake in the club for $55 and in return vote on everything from team selection to what players to sign, the first team in world football to do this.

For now, though, Perry and other staff at Mansfield are considering how to repeat their unique experiment.

"We put our necks on the line, it was worth it and we would do it again because of the fans," Perry said. "Mansfield has had a tough time, it's an old mining and hosiery town and it's getting back on its feet. But I know how the town is working and there's some great enterprise going on here."

With a near full house and media interest, Mansfield Town's gamble was a success. Except in one way: they lost 2-0.