Sunday, November 01, 2009
Football Observer Sunday: Some Views on Club Ownership
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The Sunday Observer/Paul Wilson
Lost tribe of supporters could cost 2018 bid dear
The crowd trouble at Barnsley and West Ham shows that for all the talk of inclusivity, some fans feel they have been priced out of the game
Typical, isn't it? Just when you are bidding to bring the 2018 World Cup to your green and pleasant shores, outbreaks of 70s‑style hooliganism keep getting in the way, cropping up noxiously to remind the world that football in England is nowhere near as safe and sanitised as the image the Premier League portrays.
It was tempting to dismiss the West Ham-Millwall ugliness in August as a one-off, an unfortunate blot on an otherwise presentable copybook caused by over-lagered louts with a history of hating each other. What happened at Barnsley the other night was less easy to overlook, particularly as the trashing of Oakwell's north stand concourse and intimidation of staff and police were caused by Manchester United supporters. That is to say, followers of the most prominent club in the country, the one with the biggest ground and facilities that are bound to form part of any English World Cup.
If United supporters cannot behave themselves then English football is in trouble, never mind the 2018 bid. Yet before rushing to conclusions, such as the fashionable one that the recent wave of film and book nostalgia for the hooligan era is actually breathing new life into the old ultra-violence, let's try to keep a sense of perspective. What do United fans have against Barnsley, for a start? Why didn't they vandalise Anfield on Sunday when they had the chance? How come Old Trafford has a reputation for being a quiet place to watch a game – "It's just like being in church" – and why are United fans not wreaking havoc on their Premier League travels?
A clue may lie in the competition. West Ham and Barnsley were staging Carling Cup games, not regular league matches. The suspicion is that different sets of supporters become involved when tickets are both cheaper and more easily available than for regular fixtures. In all probability West Ham v Millwall on a late summer evening was always a recipe for a ruck and, while some have called for future cup pairings to be redrawn or played behind closed doors, it is likely a greater awareness and massively increased police presence will serve just as well. Barnsley, too, will think twice before giving a whole end to visiting fans in future, especially if the tickets are going to be snapped up by fans disenfranchised by the Old Trafford pricing policy from watching their team on a regular basis.
While it cannot be said with total certainty that was the situation at Oakwell, it seems quite a likely scenario. The away fans at Barnsley sang with a gusto not normally heard at Old Trafford and went through their whole repertoire, not just including the Eric Cantona songs but even the one about Diego Forlán making the Scousers cry, which was hardly relevant or pertinent. It was as if they had not had a chance to sing for a while. That does not entitle them to vent their additional frustration on the burger bar, but before Old Trafford seats were snapped up by corporate clients and Japanese tourists some of them belonged to people who tended to show their allegiance to United by working over the opposition.
This sort of aggression has not disappeared, it has simply been moved along by modern stadiums. Moved outside, mostly. A Manchester City fan recently explained how pointless it was to be kept inside Old Trafford for up to half an hour after the end of a game. "The police do it for our safety, so the United fans can get off home and there is no danger from the two sets of supporters mixing," he said. "What they don't seem to understand is that United fans who have watched the game are not the problem. The people waiting for us outside, lurking in the shadows with bottles and stones, didn't go to the match in the first place."
As Lord Triesman is planning "a World Cup that embraces and celebrates our diverse communities and considers their various needs", perhaps he should co-opt a representative of the lost tribe of working-class football supporters and juvenile delinquents to his "inclusivity advisory group". You think I am joking? The 2018 bid has just set up such a body to make sure absolutely no constituency is overlooked in England's efforts to host a World Cup, and it includes experts on racial equality, disabled supporters, women's football, social legacy and gay awareness. Sadly, it does not appear to have anyone speaking up for people who can no longer afford to watch football. If you find you can get to see your favourite team only once or twice a year in Carling Cup matches, you might have to smash up a few more Championship grounds before you get noticed.
There's something I don't understand about the 2018 bid. Something big. The word bid appears to have changed its meaning to grovel. England is famous for football. The Premier League is supposedly the best in the world. You may sneer, but it is certainly in the top three and our stadiums and infrastructure are not lacking. And it's England's turn. By 2018 England will not have had a World Cup for more than half a century. So why do we have to bend over backwards, spending untold millions on box‑ticking exercises and pointlessly inviting English football journalists to watch U2 live at Wembley? (It's not that U2 are pointless, although opinion is divided on the subject, it's that English journalists have no sway with Fifa and are predisposed toward the bid anyway.)
Instead of pandering to bid vulture Jack Warner and boring everyone to death about inclusivity, we ought simply to ask Sepp Blatter what good reasons exist for not giving England the next European tournament. We deserve a World Cup in this country because the world seems to like the way we do football. If inclusivity counts for more than that, include me out.
BLACK AND WHITE AND READY TO SELL OUT?
"Why don't they go the whole hog and change the name of the club itself?" saintly and wholly blameless former Newcastle United chairman Freddy Shepherd has just asked, apropos of the new lot's plan to sell the naming rights to St James' Park.
Be careful what you wish for, Fred. If advertisers are willing to spend millions on shirt sponsorship, partnership deals and stadium titles, just think how much money they would give to have the actual team named in their honour. Mike Ashley is probably thinking it already.
The only snag, if teams are to sell their souls as well as their shirts and stadiums, is that the highest bidder may not always be the most desirable one. The Toon Army, for instance, possibly quite fancy a subtle re-branding, say dropping the United in favour of the suffix Brown Ale, but how might an unsubtle one go down? Think of what the Magpies are really most famous for. Stand by for Kleenex United.
Guardian
The Herald Sunday/Ian Bell - Failed capitalists shouldn’t be entrusted to run football clubs
1 Nov 2009
It is a brave politician who lectures a bank on its moral responsibilities these days.
People tend to laugh. Credit, then, to Jim Murphy for reminding Lloyds Banking Group last week that there is more to a football club than a pound of fiscal flesh.
To be fair, the Scottish Secretary was not alone. The plight of Glasgow Rangers FC roused much of the political class. In addition to any monies due, they said, there is that intangible thing, community, or what academics term “social and emotional capital”.
Rangers fans were listening hard, I have no doubt, and were probably alert to a couple of ironies. Lloyds might claim rights over their club. But the Ibrox supporters – those who have not lost their jobs thanks to the banks – have a stake of their own. As taxpayers, they share 43% of lovely Lloyds.
A funny thing, ownership, nevertheless. Fans feel it, but can rarely put a negotiable price on it. They own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis. Can that law ever be rewritten? At Ibrox, as you will read elsewhere, we may be about to find out.
Fans own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis Ian Bell
First, though, ask a dumb question: what is a club, anyhow? Why do we still attach that hospitable word to sporting franchises tossed about among groups of rich men like poker chips?
Join a fishing club, say, and you have rights. You get to vote for office-bearers. You get a say over club policy. You are a member, not a minnow in the revenue stream. In football, most of the time, these notions are laughable.
Yet in some cities things are different. At Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, famously, members rule. The same is true elsewhere: Hamburg and Schalke do as well as any while remaining in the fans’ ownership. And this is not because they have discovered something new, but because they have stuck with an old idea: a club is an association of like-minded people, a community.
The modern corporate monsters arose when early clubs embraced limited liability laws. The idea, as every history of football explains, was to raise cash and protect office-bearers should financial catastrophe strike. The result, though, was shareholders. First the small businessmen replaced the working men, then the big businessmen swallowed the small. Now sheikhs and oligarchs swallow all.
But not Barcelona, or Hamburg. It stands to reason, or at least to what passes for reason among economists, that football isn’t really about money. No modern football club, least of all a Scottish club, makes a profit in the recognised sense. That shouldn’t be the point, in any case. So why should ownership be confined to a few?
Allowing the Rangers support to take possession of 49% of the club – reviving the club as a club – would reaffirm that football belongs to those who care most. That, in part, is what community means. And in the wider world, where the game remains a mark of identity and belonging, despite all its parasites, this matters.
Try one line of thought, tentatively. Begin with the fact that “the Gers” are not beloved among bystanders. Might a democratised club begin to change the atmosphere? Might the rest of us ease up on those jokes involving cartoon castles? And might the old diseases respond to the will of massed shareholders who have risked their own cash?
I know: a bit romantic, isn’t it? How many Barca fans have a real say? Who wants to be Clyde, or even Notts County? How do you raise investment once the fans’ cash has gone and a bank – a nice bank, call it Lloyds – tires of funding “amateurs”? Isn’t it the case, in fact, that so-called democratic ownership only becomes popular when a club is in trouble?
True enough, in each particular. The fact remains that the familiar model of ownership – call it the baronial model – is scarcely reeking of prudence. In fact, it’s a disaster. Leeds? Portsmouth? Gretna? Hearts? The list of British clubs that have flirted with disaster in the last decade is longer than I can calculate. Some players and their agents prosper, for now, but no one else.
We are supposed to accept that the crisis of Scottish football is due to a loss of TV revenue. That isn’t even half the story. We are then supposed to believe that “Europe”, elite football, offers salvation. How many can you cram into the elite bus? There isn’t much room.
Study one of the messageboards for fans of the mighty Man U. Watch them sweat over the Glazers and debt. The calculation is simple: one bad Champions League and the game is up. Liverpool fans, already sensing the worst, have a democratising thing called ShareLiverpoolFC for much the same reason.
You cannot call this the People’s Game and leave it in the hands of failed capitalists. You cannot talk about “social responsibility” and deny the demands of community. Clubs, real clubs, were not formed because the scufflers from the yards or the pits were in it for the money. Smart men, those. The Herald
Herald Sun - Fan-ownership: Time to put up or shut-up
Michael Grant Published on 1 Nov 2009
GIVEN that no queue of oligarchs has assembled at the main entrance to Ibrox, the notion of Rangers becoming a members-owned club, transparent and answerable to thousands of rank-and-file supporters, has to be taken seriously.
There was a time when Rangers was one of the most insular and covert clubs of all, dictating policies about the non-selection of Catholics which were too controversial to be openly acknowledged or confirmed. Those were the epitome of decisions taken in smoke-filled back rooms. Mercifully those days are long gone, but this – the idea of throwing Rangers open to members and a democratic electorate – really would amount to daylight flooding in on the running of a Scottish institution.
Who would have thought that Rangers, the most conservative of Scottish clubs, might one day fall into what amounts to a socialist model of collective ownership? We are a long way from it coming to pass, and the smart money should be on South Africa-based ex-pat Dave King eventually completing a conventional takeover. But as revealed elsewhere in these pages today, the idea of raising money from thousands of fee-paying members is being discussed by some of those businessmen interested in taking Rangers away from the ownership of Sir David Murray and the boardroom influence of Lloyds Banking Group.
Imagine it: thousands of members trooping along to Ibrox every so often to elect a board and a president, to vote on who should represent the fans on that board, even to decide what the annual transfer budget should be. There can’t be any doubt that this would make Rangers look imaginative, modern and progressive, not to mention reflective of the moods and wishes of their supporters. It would be fine public relations for a club far too often dragged down by the vocal minority still consumed by bigotry.
Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out Michael Grant
It is worth stressing that the businessmen who are currently considering a membership scheme aren’t doing so for wholly idealistic reasons. They are contemplating raising money from members because they don’t have enough to see through a revolutionary takeover on their own. There’s no point Rangers falling into the hands of someone who can afford only the asking price and is then penniless just when everyone is expecting signings, new contracts and investment.
So that’s when the plea might go out for fans to become fee-paying “members”. Supporters would be asked to pay, say, £200 a year for membership status and voting rights, etc. Perhaps this sum would be on top of their season-ticket prices, or perhaps deals and schemes could be introduced to lessen the overall price. It won’t necessarily be an easy sell to supporters. Many might be unable or unwilling to fork out more dough. Many will be suspicious of the motivations of the businessmen – any businessmen – who essentially want them to prop up their own takeover.
Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured again of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out. The reason hardly anyone bought into a share issue in 2004 when Rangers were up to their back teeth in debt (nearly £74m compared to the current £30m) was a widespread wariness of, and exasperation towards, Sir David Murray’s stewardship of the club. Anyone who goes cap in hand to supporters now will have to be damned sure that the public relations battle has been won and he is seen as “a good thing for Rangers”.
David Edgar of the Rangers Supporters Trust hasn’t canvassed a large section of the fanbase, but he is convinced that the faithful would rally the call and find money to fund a takeover, so long as they were sure Murray would not benefit and the club itself would. His instincts will have to be right if any membership scheme is to have a chance. If the response is half-hearted, Rangers will be stranded, probably debt-free, but in the hands of a consortium of well-meaning businessmen without the resources to take the club forward.
Problems are easy to detect. The model of collective ownership is perceived as being successful at Barcelona and Real Madrid, but how much of their vast transfer budgets come from broadcasting income and merchandising rather than the fees of their members (which, along with their season ticket prices, are comparatively low)? Is it realistic to expect supporters to cough up, say, £200 every year on top of their season ticket prices? What if the novelty wears off for many after their initial buy-in, and membership – and therefore income – dwindles? Can this complex management structure be implemented in order to defuse one of the great criticisms of collective ownership, namely that you have to consult 40,000 people before you can buy a new lightbulb?
Notwithstanding the understandable and legitimate desire of the likes of Edgar for supporters to have a voice on the board, the best scenario for the club surely remains a straightforward takeover by a single, extremely wealthy businessman with Rangers DNA. Only Dave King currently fits the bill and it remains to be seen whether he will get his hands on the club.
That’s why the member-ownership model is a genuine alternative. Rangers fans aren’t the easiest to please and they let Murray and others know about it when they have a grievance. This would require them to put their money where there mouths are. Without King or any other white knight, they may have no option except reaching into their pockets and becoming even more than the lifeblood of their club. The Herald
And Johnny Giles/Herald Ireland - Hull City chose to fly too close to the sun
Friday October 30 2009
IT'S a risky business, this Premier League. Run a finger down the divisions in England and it quickly becomes apparent that rock bottom for over-ambitious clubs is nearer the Conference now than it has ever been before.
At the moment, Hull City seem to be teetering on the brink. It is never good to see a club begin a slide which could be steep and fast. A year ago they were dining out on a place in the top four but from the moment Phil Brown delivered that very public and very foolish half-time harangue, the possibility of such a collapse became a probability.
The story of boom-or-bust clubs is an old one in football but these are perilous times indeed for the game we all cherish and Hull City is just another example of a club that rose too far, too fast and drunk on the success of it all, entered into commitments that their own accountants reckon they will not be able to meet if relegation happens.
STAKES
The reality is that the same script could be written for many, many clubs in all divisions, the League of Ireland, Serie A or anywhere you care to mention. Football ownership has always been about a big punt and nothing else.
But the stakes are higher than ever and the punishment for failure too severe for even big clubs to sustain. A big club with a big fan base such as Leeds United will always have the capacity to recover from major setbacks but the fact that they are having to do it from League One should be a salutary lesson for everyone. The fall is deeper than it was before and the real threat of extinction is now hovering over a wide swathe of clubs.
The Hull success story was the perfect fairytale for a town which understood high-quality sport through rugby league and took to the Premier League with a will when Phil Brown performed his miracle.
The money involved in the Premier League is truly enormous and whatever structures Hull had in place to cope were clearly inadequate. The pressure of living with a desperate brawl for survival takes the shine off life in the big time and cracks will inevitably appear. Just look at the list of clubs now in serious trouble because they tried to survive at the highest level and in Leeds’s case, in the elite Top Four. Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton, Ipswich, Leicester, Charlton, Coventry, Notts Forest – all clubs damaged in different ways by a shared hunger to play in the Premier League and now struggling to survive the consequences.
The major side-effect is that football is becoming ever more the plaything of rich individuals or business men looking for a quick way to make money. Wealthy men from all over the world are drawn to ownership in the Premier League and while that interest used to be confined to the very biggest clubs, the watermark has been moving down the table for some time now and it won't be long before domestic ownership of clubs in England will be the exception.
Nobody really knows what this will mean for the game over the long haul but even in the teeth of recession, there are still plenty of groups eyeing up a bargain in the UK, whether for entertainment or profit. Birmingham and Sunderland found new backers and there are daily headlines about Newcastle, Portsmouth and Liverpool among many others.
There's been speculation about share dealing at the Emirates and the Glazers keep their heads down and do business in their own inscrutable way while Alex Ferguson drives the brand forward. Every club appears to be up for sale and, in many cases, at a knock-down price if you are prepared to take on serious debt. There really is no such thing as a bargain in football ownership and anyone who thinks otherwise is not living in the real world. Very few clubs win often enough to generate a profit.
DELUSIONS
Some clubs manage to walk the thin line between coping and ruin by careful management of their finances. West Brom is a good example. In recent seasons, they've bounced up and down from the Championship to the Premier League but finances are regulated with relegation built in and wage payments never get so out of hand that a demotion would threaten the viability of the operation.
Premier League mid-table is the goal for a club like West Brom and that would be a serious achievement. Others have delusions of grandeur and I'm thinking specifically about Mike Ashley who thought he had found a way to indulge his own sporting fantasies and pocket a fortune along the way at St James’ Park. According to estimates, he has burned well over £100m and counting. Lemmings are driven to head for the nearest cliff by instinct but men like Ashley only recognise that the end is nigh when they look down and realise that they are running on thin air.
- John Giles - Herald (Ireland)
The Sunday Observer/Paul Wilson
Lost tribe of supporters could cost 2018 bid dear
The crowd trouble at Barnsley and West Ham shows that for all the talk of inclusivity, some fans feel they have been priced out of the game
Typical, isn't it? Just when you are bidding to bring the 2018 World Cup to your green and pleasant shores, outbreaks of 70s‑style hooliganism keep getting in the way, cropping up noxiously to remind the world that football in England is nowhere near as safe and sanitised as the image the Premier League portrays.
It was tempting to dismiss the West Ham-Millwall ugliness in August as a one-off, an unfortunate blot on an otherwise presentable copybook caused by over-lagered louts with a history of hating each other. What happened at Barnsley the other night was less easy to overlook, particularly as the trashing of Oakwell's north stand concourse and intimidation of staff and police were caused by Manchester United supporters. That is to say, followers of the most prominent club in the country, the one with the biggest ground and facilities that are bound to form part of any English World Cup.
If United supporters cannot behave themselves then English football is in trouble, never mind the 2018 bid. Yet before rushing to conclusions, such as the fashionable one that the recent wave of film and book nostalgia for the hooligan era is actually breathing new life into the old ultra-violence, let's try to keep a sense of perspective. What do United fans have against Barnsley, for a start? Why didn't they vandalise Anfield on Sunday when they had the chance? How come Old Trafford has a reputation for being a quiet place to watch a game – "It's just like being in church" – and why are United fans not wreaking havoc on their Premier League travels?
A clue may lie in the competition. West Ham and Barnsley were staging Carling Cup games, not regular league matches. The suspicion is that different sets of supporters become involved when tickets are both cheaper and more easily available than for regular fixtures. In all probability West Ham v Millwall on a late summer evening was always a recipe for a ruck and, while some have called for future cup pairings to be redrawn or played behind closed doors, it is likely a greater awareness and massively increased police presence will serve just as well. Barnsley, too, will think twice before giving a whole end to visiting fans in future, especially if the tickets are going to be snapped up by fans disenfranchised by the Old Trafford pricing policy from watching their team on a regular basis.
While it cannot be said with total certainty that was the situation at Oakwell, it seems quite a likely scenario. The away fans at Barnsley sang with a gusto not normally heard at Old Trafford and went through their whole repertoire, not just including the Eric Cantona songs but even the one about Diego Forlán making the Scousers cry, which was hardly relevant or pertinent. It was as if they had not had a chance to sing for a while. That does not entitle them to vent their additional frustration on the burger bar, but before Old Trafford seats were snapped up by corporate clients and Japanese tourists some of them belonged to people who tended to show their allegiance to United by working over the opposition.
This sort of aggression has not disappeared, it has simply been moved along by modern stadiums. Moved outside, mostly. A Manchester City fan recently explained how pointless it was to be kept inside Old Trafford for up to half an hour after the end of a game. "The police do it for our safety, so the United fans can get off home and there is no danger from the two sets of supporters mixing," he said. "What they don't seem to understand is that United fans who have watched the game are not the problem. The people waiting for us outside, lurking in the shadows with bottles and stones, didn't go to the match in the first place."
As Lord Triesman is planning "a World Cup that embraces and celebrates our diverse communities and considers their various needs", perhaps he should co-opt a representative of the lost tribe of working-class football supporters and juvenile delinquents to his "inclusivity advisory group". You think I am joking? The 2018 bid has just set up such a body to make sure absolutely no constituency is overlooked in England's efforts to host a World Cup, and it includes experts on racial equality, disabled supporters, women's football, social legacy and gay awareness. Sadly, it does not appear to have anyone speaking up for people who can no longer afford to watch football. If you find you can get to see your favourite team only once or twice a year in Carling Cup matches, you might have to smash up a few more Championship grounds before you get noticed.
There's something I don't understand about the 2018 bid. Something big. The word bid appears to have changed its meaning to grovel. England is famous for football. The Premier League is supposedly the best in the world. You may sneer, but it is certainly in the top three and our stadiums and infrastructure are not lacking. And it's England's turn. By 2018 England will not have had a World Cup for more than half a century. So why do we have to bend over backwards, spending untold millions on box‑ticking exercises and pointlessly inviting English football journalists to watch U2 live at Wembley? (It's not that U2 are pointless, although opinion is divided on the subject, it's that English journalists have no sway with Fifa and are predisposed toward the bid anyway.)
Instead of pandering to bid vulture Jack Warner and boring everyone to death about inclusivity, we ought simply to ask Sepp Blatter what good reasons exist for not giving England the next European tournament. We deserve a World Cup in this country because the world seems to like the way we do football. If inclusivity counts for more than that, include me out.
BLACK AND WHITE AND READY TO SELL OUT?
"Why don't they go the whole hog and change the name of the club itself?" saintly and wholly blameless former Newcastle United chairman Freddy Shepherd has just asked, apropos of the new lot's plan to sell the naming rights to St James' Park.
Be careful what you wish for, Fred. If advertisers are willing to spend millions on shirt sponsorship, partnership deals and stadium titles, just think how much money they would give to have the actual team named in their honour. Mike Ashley is probably thinking it already.
The only snag, if teams are to sell their souls as well as their shirts and stadiums, is that the highest bidder may not always be the most desirable one. The Toon Army, for instance, possibly quite fancy a subtle re-branding, say dropping the United in favour of the suffix Brown Ale, but how might an unsubtle one go down? Think of what the Magpies are really most famous for. Stand by for Kleenex United.
Guardian
The Herald Sunday/Ian Bell - Failed capitalists shouldn’t be entrusted to run football clubs
1 Nov 2009
It is a brave politician who lectures a bank on its moral responsibilities these days.
People tend to laugh. Credit, then, to Jim Murphy for reminding Lloyds Banking Group last week that there is more to a football club than a pound of fiscal flesh.
To be fair, the Scottish Secretary was not alone. The plight of Glasgow Rangers FC roused much of the political class. In addition to any monies due, they said, there is that intangible thing, community, or what academics term “social and emotional capital”.
Rangers fans were listening hard, I have no doubt, and were probably alert to a couple of ironies. Lloyds might claim rights over their club. But the Ibrox supporters – those who have not lost their jobs thanks to the banks – have a stake of their own. As taxpayers, they share 43% of lovely Lloyds.
A funny thing, ownership, nevertheless. Fans feel it, but can rarely put a negotiable price on it. They own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis. Can that law ever be rewritten? At Ibrox, as you will read elsewhere, we may be about to find out.
Fans own the club in any sense that matters, but not in any sense that means much in a crisis Ian Bell
First, though, ask a dumb question: what is a club, anyhow? Why do we still attach that hospitable word to sporting franchises tossed about among groups of rich men like poker chips?
Join a fishing club, say, and you have rights. You get to vote for office-bearers. You get a say over club policy. You are a member, not a minnow in the revenue stream. In football, most of the time, these notions are laughable.
Yet in some cities things are different. At Barcelona, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, famously, members rule. The same is true elsewhere: Hamburg and Schalke do as well as any while remaining in the fans’ ownership. And this is not because they have discovered something new, but because they have stuck with an old idea: a club is an association of like-minded people, a community.
The modern corporate monsters arose when early clubs embraced limited liability laws. The idea, as every history of football explains, was to raise cash and protect office-bearers should financial catastrophe strike. The result, though, was shareholders. First the small businessmen replaced the working men, then the big businessmen swallowed the small. Now sheikhs and oligarchs swallow all.
But not Barcelona, or Hamburg. It stands to reason, or at least to what passes for reason among economists, that football isn’t really about money. No modern football club, least of all a Scottish club, makes a profit in the recognised sense. That shouldn’t be the point, in any case. So why should ownership be confined to a few?
Allowing the Rangers support to take possession of 49% of the club – reviving the club as a club – would reaffirm that football belongs to those who care most. That, in part, is what community means. And in the wider world, where the game remains a mark of identity and belonging, despite all its parasites, this matters.
Try one line of thought, tentatively. Begin with the fact that “the Gers” are not beloved among bystanders. Might a democratised club begin to change the atmosphere? Might the rest of us ease up on those jokes involving cartoon castles? And might the old diseases respond to the will of massed shareholders who have risked their own cash?
I know: a bit romantic, isn’t it? How many Barca fans have a real say? Who wants to be Clyde, or even Notts County? How do you raise investment once the fans’ cash has gone and a bank – a nice bank, call it Lloyds – tires of funding “amateurs”? Isn’t it the case, in fact, that so-called democratic ownership only becomes popular when a club is in trouble?
True enough, in each particular. The fact remains that the familiar model of ownership – call it the baronial model – is scarcely reeking of prudence. In fact, it’s a disaster. Leeds? Portsmouth? Gretna? Hearts? The list of British clubs that have flirted with disaster in the last decade is longer than I can calculate. Some players and their agents prosper, for now, but no one else.
We are supposed to accept that the crisis of Scottish football is due to a loss of TV revenue. That isn’t even half the story. We are then supposed to believe that “Europe”, elite football, offers salvation. How many can you cram into the elite bus? There isn’t much room.
Study one of the messageboards for fans of the mighty Man U. Watch them sweat over the Glazers and debt. The calculation is simple: one bad Champions League and the game is up. Liverpool fans, already sensing the worst, have a democratising thing called ShareLiverpoolFC for much the same reason.
You cannot call this the People’s Game and leave it in the hands of failed capitalists. You cannot talk about “social responsibility” and deny the demands of community. Clubs, real clubs, were not formed because the scufflers from the yards or the pits were in it for the money. Smart men, those. The Herald
Herald Sun - Fan-ownership: Time to put up or shut-up
Michael Grant Published on 1 Nov 2009
GIVEN that no queue of oligarchs has assembled at the main entrance to Ibrox, the notion of Rangers becoming a members-owned club, transparent and answerable to thousands of rank-and-file supporters, has to be taken seriously.
There was a time when Rangers was one of the most insular and covert clubs of all, dictating policies about the non-selection of Catholics which were too controversial to be openly acknowledged or confirmed. Those were the epitome of decisions taken in smoke-filled back rooms. Mercifully those days are long gone, but this – the idea of throwing Rangers open to members and a democratic electorate – really would amount to daylight flooding in on the running of a Scottish institution.
Who would have thought that Rangers, the most conservative of Scottish clubs, might one day fall into what amounts to a socialist model of collective ownership? We are a long way from it coming to pass, and the smart money should be on South Africa-based ex-pat Dave King eventually completing a conventional takeover. But as revealed elsewhere in these pages today, the idea of raising money from thousands of fee-paying members is being discussed by some of those businessmen interested in taking Rangers away from the ownership of Sir David Murray and the boardroom influence of Lloyds Banking Group.
Imagine it: thousands of members trooping along to Ibrox every so often to elect a board and a president, to vote on who should represent the fans on that board, even to decide what the annual transfer budget should be. There can’t be any doubt that this would make Rangers look imaginative, modern and progressive, not to mention reflective of the moods and wishes of their supporters. It would be fine public relations for a club far too often dragged down by the vocal minority still consumed by bigotry.
Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out Michael Grant
It is worth stressing that the businessmen who are currently considering a membership scheme aren’t doing so for wholly idealistic reasons. They are contemplating raising money from members because they don’t have enough to see through a revolutionary takeover on their own. There’s no point Rangers falling into the hands of someone who can afford only the asking price and is then penniless just when everyone is expecting signings, new contracts and investment.
So that’s when the plea might go out for fans to become fee-paying “members”. Supporters would be asked to pay, say, £200 a year for membership status and voting rights, etc. Perhaps this sum would be on top of their season-ticket prices, or perhaps deals and schemes could be introduced to lessen the overall price. It won’t necessarily be an easy sell to supporters. Many might be unable or unwilling to fork out more dough. Many will be suspicious of the motivations of the businessmen – any businessmen – who essentially want them to prop up their own takeover.
Supporters aren’t daft. They would have to be reassured, reassured and reassured again of the credentials and intentions of the men who seek to use their money to beef up a buy-out. The reason hardly anyone bought into a share issue in 2004 when Rangers were up to their back teeth in debt (nearly £74m compared to the current £30m) was a widespread wariness of, and exasperation towards, Sir David Murray’s stewardship of the club. Anyone who goes cap in hand to supporters now will have to be damned sure that the public relations battle has been won and he is seen as “a good thing for Rangers”.
David Edgar of the Rangers Supporters Trust hasn’t canvassed a large section of the fanbase, but he is convinced that the faithful would rally the call and find money to fund a takeover, so long as they were sure Murray would not benefit and the club itself would. His instincts will have to be right if any membership scheme is to have a chance. If the response is half-hearted, Rangers will be stranded, probably debt-free, but in the hands of a consortium of well-meaning businessmen without the resources to take the club forward.
Problems are easy to detect. The model of collective ownership is perceived as being successful at Barcelona and Real Madrid, but how much of their vast transfer budgets come from broadcasting income and merchandising rather than the fees of their members (which, along with their season ticket prices, are comparatively low)? Is it realistic to expect supporters to cough up, say, £200 every year on top of their season ticket prices? What if the novelty wears off for many after their initial buy-in, and membership – and therefore income – dwindles? Can this complex management structure be implemented in order to defuse one of the great criticisms of collective ownership, namely that you have to consult 40,000 people before you can buy a new lightbulb?
Notwithstanding the understandable and legitimate desire of the likes of Edgar for supporters to have a voice on the board, the best scenario for the club surely remains a straightforward takeover by a single, extremely wealthy businessman with Rangers DNA. Only Dave King currently fits the bill and it remains to be seen whether he will get his hands on the club.
That’s why the member-ownership model is a genuine alternative. Rangers fans aren’t the easiest to please and they let Murray and others know about it when they have a grievance. This would require them to put their money where there mouths are. Without King or any other white knight, they may have no option except reaching into their pockets and becoming even more than the lifeblood of their club. The Herald
And Johnny Giles/Herald Ireland - Hull City chose to fly too close to the sun
Friday October 30 2009
IT'S a risky business, this Premier League. Run a finger down the divisions in England and it quickly becomes apparent that rock bottom for over-ambitious clubs is nearer the Conference now than it has ever been before.
At the moment, Hull City seem to be teetering on the brink. It is never good to see a club begin a slide which could be steep and fast. A year ago they were dining out on a place in the top four but from the moment Phil Brown delivered that very public and very foolish half-time harangue, the possibility of such a collapse became a probability.
The story of boom-or-bust clubs is an old one in football but these are perilous times indeed for the game we all cherish and Hull City is just another example of a club that rose too far, too fast and drunk on the success of it all, entered into commitments that their own accountants reckon they will not be able to meet if relegation happens.
STAKES
The reality is that the same script could be written for many, many clubs in all divisions, the League of Ireland, Serie A or anywhere you care to mention. Football ownership has always been about a big punt and nothing else.
But the stakes are higher than ever and the punishment for failure too severe for even big clubs to sustain. A big club with a big fan base such as Leeds United will always have the capacity to recover from major setbacks but the fact that they are having to do it from League One should be a salutary lesson for everyone. The fall is deeper than it was before and the real threat of extinction is now hovering over a wide swathe of clubs.
The Hull success story was the perfect fairytale for a town which understood high-quality sport through rugby league and took to the Premier League with a will when Phil Brown performed his miracle.
The money involved in the Premier League is truly enormous and whatever structures Hull had in place to cope were clearly inadequate. The pressure of living with a desperate brawl for survival takes the shine off life in the big time and cracks will inevitably appear. Just look at the list of clubs now in serious trouble because they tried to survive at the highest level and in Leeds’s case, in the elite Top Four. Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton, Ipswich, Leicester, Charlton, Coventry, Notts Forest – all clubs damaged in different ways by a shared hunger to play in the Premier League and now struggling to survive the consequences.
The major side-effect is that football is becoming ever more the plaything of rich individuals or business men looking for a quick way to make money. Wealthy men from all over the world are drawn to ownership in the Premier League and while that interest used to be confined to the very biggest clubs, the watermark has been moving down the table for some time now and it won't be long before domestic ownership of clubs in England will be the exception.
Nobody really knows what this will mean for the game over the long haul but even in the teeth of recession, there are still plenty of groups eyeing up a bargain in the UK, whether for entertainment or profit. Birmingham and Sunderland found new backers and there are daily headlines about Newcastle, Portsmouth and Liverpool among many others.
There's been speculation about share dealing at the Emirates and the Glazers keep their heads down and do business in their own inscrutable way while Alex Ferguson drives the brand forward. Every club appears to be up for sale and, in many cases, at a knock-down price if you are prepared to take on serious debt. There really is no such thing as a bargain in football ownership and anyone who thinks otherwise is not living in the real world. Very few clubs win often enough to generate a profit.
DELUSIONS
Some clubs manage to walk the thin line between coping and ruin by careful management of their finances. West Brom is a good example. In recent seasons, they've bounced up and down from the Championship to the Premier League but finances are regulated with relegation built in and wage payments never get so out of hand that a demotion would threaten the viability of the operation.
Premier League mid-table is the goal for a club like West Brom and that would be a serious achievement. Others have delusions of grandeur and I'm thinking specifically about Mike Ashley who thought he had found a way to indulge his own sporting fantasies and pocket a fortune along the way at St James’ Park. According to estimates, he has burned well over £100m and counting. Lemmings are driven to head for the nearest cliff by instinct but men like Ashley only recognise that the end is nigh when they look down and realise that they are running on thin air.
- John Giles - Herald (Ireland)
