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The concept of a fan owned club


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Interested to hear peoples thoughts on this and if its actually a viable option. 

Just from a fag packet maths point of view (and the numbers being floated about) we would need £30 mill a year to run the club. This might improve as the costs are reduced and fans return but as a rough estimate. Then if we assume maybe 20k would invest, that's £1500 per year, per fan. Yeah....

The only way I can see that working, is if its propped up by a wealthy backer for a large share (or 49%) and fans have the main voting rights. 

We would also need to completely throw out our recruitment process. Potentially becoming an academy focused/ feeder club. I'd have no problem with this, so long as we set the player values in a tiered system and a 'the price is the price' policy. So we don't get our pants pulled down in the transfer market. (Tier 5 500k, tier 4 £1m, tiers 3 £1m-£3m) all with sell ons.

If money does come in for a player, we would need to either put that back into the academy or buy realistic targets. Maybe a more data led/ moneyball approach. Its not a perfect system at Brentford but its a hell of lot better system then ours! Big money sale, all 'member' fans to be reimbursed that season.

I appreciate this is dreamland, but with the pandemic, ESL and the very real prospect of our club going under, just thought I'd put it out there. 

Maybe someone with a bit of financial/ accounting background can tell me its a ridiculous idea ??‍♂️

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8 minutes ago, Shaftesbury Street said:

Interested to hear peoples thoughts on this and if its actually a viable option. 

Just from a fag packet maths point of view (and the numbers being floated about) we would need £30 mill a year to run the club. This might improve as the costs are reduced and fans return but as a rough estimate. Then if we assume maybe 20k would invest, that's £1500 per year, per fan. Yeah....

The only way I can see that working, is if its propped up by a wealthy backer for a large share (or 49%) and fans have the main voting rights. 

We would also need to completely throw out our recruitment process. Potentially becoming an academy focused/ feeder club. I'd have no problem with this, so long as we set the player values in a tiered system and a 'the price is the price' policy. So we don't get our pants pulled down in the transfer market. (Tier 5 500k, tier 4 £1m, tiers 3 £1m-£3m) all with sell ons.

If money does come in for a player, we would need to either put that back into the academy or buy realistic targets. Maybe a more data led/ moneyball approach. Its not a perfect system at Brentford but its a hell of lot better system then ours! Big money sale, all 'member' fans to be reimbursed that season.

I appreciate this is dreamland, but with the pandemic, ESL and the very real prospect of our club going under, just thought I'd put it out there. 

Maybe someone with a bit of financial/ accounting background can tell me its a ridiculous idea ??‍♂️

The only problem I foresee as on this site so many “fans / supporters/ members “ have differing opinions on the running of the club. Can see getting a consensus very difficult. 
Might have to do a bit more research in how the German clubs do it and how the less successful ones deal with the grumblings of fans 

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5 minutes ago, Shaftesbury Street said:

Interested to hear peoples thoughts on this and if its actually a viable option. 

Just from a fag packet maths point of view (and the numbers being floated about) we would need £30 mill a year to run the club. This might improve as the costs are reduced and fans return but as a rough estimate. Then if we assume maybe 20k would invest, that's £1500 per year, per fan. Yeah....

The only way I can see that working, is if its propped up by a wealthy backer for a large share (or 49%) and fans have the main voting rights. 

We would also need to completely throw out our recruitment process. Potentially becoming an academy focused/ feeder club. I'd have no problem with this, so long as we set the player values in a tiered system and a 'the price is the price' policy. So we don't get our pants pulled down in the transfer market. (Tier 5 500k, tier 4 £1m, tiers 3 £1m-£3m) all with sell ons.

If money does come in for a player, we would need to either put that back into the academy or buy realistic targets. Maybe a more data led/ moneyball approach. Its not a perfect system at Brentford but its a hell of lot better system then ours! Big money sale, all 'member' fans to be reimbursed that season.

I appreciate this is dreamland, but with the pandemic, ESL and the very real prospect of our club going under, just thought I'd put it out there. 

Maybe someone with a bit of financial/ accounting background can tell me its a ridiculous idea ??‍♂️

I assume you’ve based your 20k that would invest on our typical home attendance/season ticket sales. If so, don’t forget, many of those are kids (or other concessions) that clearly wouldn’t be able to invest such an amount. Also, what’s about the upfront costs to purchase the club/pay off the debts?

It’s a nice idea but I can’t see how it could work. You’d effectively be floating the club and issuing shares which would mean you’d either need a wealthy investor (which kind of defeats the object) or a lot more investors just to buy the club and then annual “subscriptions” to cover costs would have to be pretty much in line with season ticket prices. That’s how I see it anyway.

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5 minutes ago, Reggie Greenwood said:

The only problem I foresee as on this site so many “fans / supporters/ members “ have differing opinions on the running of the club. Can see getting a consensus very difficult. 
Might have to do a bit more research in how the German clubs do it and how the less successful ones deal with the grumblings of fans 

Wouldn’t it be like any publicly owned company? There would be directors etc responsible for the day to day running of the club but they would be accountable to the owner/fan/shareholders by way of an AGM.

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1 minute ago, Tamworthram said:

I assume you’ve based your 20k that would invest on our typical home attendance/season ticket sales. If so, don’t forget, many of those are kids (or other concessions) that clearly wouldn’t be able to invest such an amount. Also, what’s about the upfront costs to purchase the club/pay off the debts?

It’s a nice idea but I can’t see how it could work. You’d effectively be floating the club and issuing shares which would mean you’d either need a wealthy investor (which kind of defeats the object) or a lot more investors just to buy the club and then annual “subscriptions” to cover costs would have to be pretty much in line with season ticket prices. That’s how I see it anyway.

In that example, the point I was making was a pure fan owned model wouldn't work.

Although there are people like myself that haven't had a season ticket for years, but would happily invest as part ownership. Hard to judge what that membership could be. 

 

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1 minute ago, Tamworthram said:

Wouldn’t it be like any publicly owned company? There would be directors etc responsible for the day to day running of the club but they would be accountable to the owner/fan/shareholders by way of an AGM.

That, or fixed term elections for a President and other key appointments.

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3 minutes ago, Carnero said:

It wouldn't take £30m a year to run a sensible mid-level championship club, under GSE's final years the net shortfall was around £8m/year which I would require funding. Sensible wage control is the answer to football's financial problems, but just never happens.

Do you think an academy model would fix that? It would a be revolving door, but a recently promoted academy players wages would be significantly less. 

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You don't need £30mill to run the club. Get 20 volunteers from the fanbase to make up the playing staff on wages of £50k per year - might not win anything, but we wont financially bankrupt ourselves either. Football clubs do themselves in by offering stupid wages when they don't have Premier League money to pay for it.

 

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1 hour ago, Shaftesbury Street said:

Interested to hear peoples thoughts on this and if its actually a viable option. 

Just from a fag packet maths point of view (and the numbers being floated about) we would need £30 mill a year to run the club. This might improve as the costs are reduced and fans return but as a rough estimate. Then if we assume maybe 20k would invest, that's £1500 per year, per fan. Yeah....

The only way I can see that working, is if its propped up by a wealthy backer for a large share (or 49%) and fans have the main voting rights. 

We would also need to completely throw out our recruitment process. Potentially becoming an academy focused/ feeder club. I'd have no problem with this, so long as we set the player values in a tiered system and a 'the price is the price' policy. So we don't get our pants pulled down in the transfer market. (Tier 5 500k, tier 4 £1m, tiers 3 £1m-£3m) all with sell ons.

If money does come in for a player, we would need to either put that back into the academy or buy realistic targets. Maybe a more data led/ moneyball approach. Its not a perfect system at Brentford but its a hell of lot better system then ours! Big money sale, all 'member' fans to be reimbursed that season.

I appreciate this is dreamland, but with the pandemic, ESL and the very real prospect of our club going under, just thought I'd put it out there. 

Maybe someone with a bit of financial/ accounting background can tell me its a ridiculous idea ??‍♂️

Its an idea that I would really like to see work & totally agree with your points about change in recruitment & the need to sell players to progress. I wouldn't actually see it as a backward step either.

From a financials point of view, we turnover around £30m a year - earnt income in other words. Therefore the gap between the costs of running the club & the £30m is what fans would need to stump up each year. Looking at the 16/17 and 17/18 accounts, that is around £40m and tallies with @Carnero point about GSE having to find circa £10m a season to cover the shortfall back when they ran the club.

So we'd have 2 options really;

  1. We continue to run a staff cost of circa £40m assuming that this is the minimum outlay we'd need to be seriously competitive in the division especially from a wages perspective. £10m a season equates to 1000 fans stumping up £10k a season if the club were wholly fan owned. Of course that amount would be diluted if we could have a 50+1 German model, where 49% of the club was owned by businessmen.
  2. We insist on a model where costs can never exceed that turnover figure of £30m. This would necessitate a fundamental restructure of the club as you allude to with the Academy becoming an essential route to providing first team players & looking to buy players with potential from lower leagues & improve them. It would also require a long term approach to being successful & a total departure from glamour names, quick fix solutions & a massive dose of fan patience. This would be my preference.

Given the size of the club/fanbase in relation to the rest of the EFL, we are best placed to make something like this work (with the possible exception of Sunderland & maybe Sheff Wednesday). If we looked to adopt option 1, I think we'd need to be realistic about how many fans would be able to fund the club in this way - anything more than 1000 is fanciful & some would even think that many people is too many. 

The other key issue is how to organise ourselves as a fan collective & how to put people with serious talent at the forefront of a fans buyout. Ramstrust would seem an obvious conduit but know there was a lot of factionalism back in 2005/6 when various groups took it upon themselves to unsettle the 3 Amigos & then started claiming credit/abusing other groups when Gadsby et al slung the parasites out.

In summary, yes I think its definitely possible. I will try & do some reading on the ownership structures & stories of AFC Wimbledon, Hearts & the German ownership model to see if there's anything else to glean there. 

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31 minutes ago, Coconut said:

A fan owned football club is a League Two football club at the very best 

IMO

AFC Wimbledon are in League One & have been for the last 5 seasons.

In that time they've also managed to fund a new stadium back at Plough Lane, which has nigh on doubled their ground capacity & now opened lucrative new corporate revenue streams. This will enable them to start challenging at the top of that division in the next year or two.

Their core fanbase is below 10k, ours is significantly higher. I definitely think a Championship club could be fan owned, particularly a large one.

Edited by LeedsCityRam
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5 minutes ago, LeedsCityRam said:

AFC Wimbledon are in League One & have been for the last 4 seasons.

In that time they've also managed to fund a new stadium back at Plough Lane, which has nigh on doubled their ground capacity & now opened lucrative new corporate revenue streams. This will enable them to start challenging at the top of that division in the next year or two.

Their core fanbase is below 10k, ours is significantly higher. I definitely think a Championship club could be fan owned, particularly a large one.

Didn't realise that, thanks. Looks like I'm wrong. 

I would imagine it could only be successful if you start from pretty far down though, or with a blank slate financially.

Also there's also a pretty large amount of disparity between funding a League One club and a Championship club?

Edited by Coconut
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So, would we, specifically me, be able to siphon off some of the cash received from TV money and transfer fees? Like it's alleged some football club owners do. Not ours, I mean clubs that have money coming in.

Flippant question. Apologies.

I do like the idea, the German 51% version being the most practical given that many of us cannot afford to pump in much money.

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