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Author Topic: Community Ownership Bid?  (Read 5874 times)
theakston2k

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« Reply #15 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 14:18:38 »

Even with that you are talking in the region of £5-10m to get the assets in hand. Not saying that the club is remotely worth the £7.5m suggested by Power, but ultimately he is going to want some cash and as it stands he owes a small fortune to Standing, Clem and possibly others we don't know about.

I seem to recall the Trust suggesting that some sort of Statement would appear from them this week, interested to see what that says. 
There'd be zero chance of our fan base getting remotely near £5-£10m IMO, fan ownership is only going to be viable if the club can be picked up on the cheap in Admin or a phoenix club scenario.
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RobertT

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« Reply #16 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 14:19:35 »

I wasn't commenting on the cost to do so, just that you could make a case for a middle ground.  That you don't have to assume it's a case of buying it and then forever being stuck with no money.

Get the buggers to sell their GameStop shares and buys ours instead.
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RobertT

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« Reply #17 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 14:21:05 »

There'd be zero chance of our fan base getting remotely near £5-£10m IMO, fan ownership is only going to be viable if the club can be picked up on the cheap in Admin or a phoenix club scenario.

You don't need to finance the entire price.  Much of what would be needed to buy the club is paying off Director Loans.  You could negotiate those over time, but even if Power et al want it paid off to get out, you can finance the deal through long term loans yourself.  If the fans stump up a % of the total value, you might have a path to financing elsewhere.
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Nemo
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« Reply #18 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 14:24:44 »

Get the buggers to sell their GameStop shares and buys ours instead.

If you could short sell Swindon Town there'd be some serious money to be made!
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Nemo
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« Reply #19 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 15:02:33 »

Black wrote everything off when he sold to Jed, no? Hence the debenture.

That sale, in hindsight, was the best possible moment to take control of the club, but the transaction was done quickly and therefore we ended up with Chancers Inc.
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Formerly Drummer Boy

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« Reply #20 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 16:06:20 »

Fans ownership is the last resort to prevent a sinking ship IMO. You're talking about numbers just to buy the club without any wriggle room to handle day to day costs.. Not mentioning the EFL requires a certain amount of working capital before they give the nod to any new owners these days.

Realistically, it will cost £5-7.5mil to get rid of Power.
£2.5mil to deal with all the hidden skeletons and legal fees.
£2.2mil for the stadium.
£30mil to improve the stadium, facilities and start other business ventures because football on it's own makes fuck all profit.
How much for a proper training ground? £2.5mil all said and done?
Then working capital..

Realistically to do it properly, the club needs a good £40mil pumped in to set up the foundations for a sustainable future.

Invest your £250 a share for now into Bitcoin and Etherum and one day, hopefully, we'll have enough when the time comes to act!

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That Nestor Lorenzo Heade

« Reply #21 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 17:07:34 »

Fans ownership is the last resort to prevent a sinking ship IMO. You're talking about numbers just to buy the club without any wriggle room to handle day to day costs.. Not mentioning the EFL requires a certain amount of working capital before they give the nod to any new owners these days.

Realistically, it will cost £5-7.5mil to get rid of Power.
£2.5mil to deal with all the hidden skeletons and legal fees.
£2.2mil for the stadium.
£30mil to improve the stadium, facilities and start other business ventures because football on it's own makes fuck all profit.
How much for a proper training ground? £2.5mil all said and done?
Then working capital..

Realistically to do it properly, the club needs a good £40mil pumped in to set up the foundations for a sustainable future.

Invest your £250 a share for now into Bitcoin and Etherum and one day, hopefully, we'll have enough when the time comes to act!



I think you could isolate the stadium project and create a working group with relevant expertise to tackle this, working alongside the Trust and the Council.  

At the moment the club is a closed shop and there is no opportunity for willing volunteers to get involved.  But add some new energy and expertise into the mix, along with a good dose of goodwill and a common goal and I think we could make speedy progress on many fronts.
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Formerly Drummer Boy

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« Reply #22 on: Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 23:14:26 »

I think you could isolate the stadium project and create a working group with relevant expertise to tackle this, working alongside the Trust and the Council.  

At the moment the club is a closed shop and there is no opportunity for willing volunteers to get involved.  But add some new energy and expertise into the mix, along with a good dose of goodwill and a common goal and I think we could make speedy progress on many fronts.

If you sideline the stadium into a separate project... Speedy progress to what though? The vision you are proposing cannot be purely to stay stagnant and go sideways? Whoever owns the club next needed to have a strong and strong strategy to kick it on. I honestly don't see how fans scrambling a couple of million together just to keep the club alive is a viable option that will bring any form of success.
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Flashheart

« Reply #23 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 07:46:55 »

I honestly don't see how fans scrambling a couple of million together just to keep the club alive is a viable option that will bring any form of success.

This is one of the main reasons why I vote no.

Rightly or wrongly, some rich people pick up a club to invest in the hope of reaping in the rewards when the club sees some success. It works for some. But, of course, where is this investment money going to come from if the club is going to be owned by the community? Even if we managed to whip around 1/2 mil to buy a player who turns out to be a dud, what are we going to do, have another whip around every time it happens?

With private owners, there is the risk of getting shysters who will tear a club apart (and Power's a relative saint in that regard), but you're also more likely to get stagnation. Why would fans be happy with that? I'd rather take the risk of having some shit times balanced with some great times than to just remain static year after year.
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That Nestor Lorenzo Heade

« Reply #24 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 08:32:18 »

If you sideline the stadium into a separate project... Speedy progress to what though? The vision you are proposing cannot be purely to stay stagnant and go sideways? Whoever owns the club next needed to have a strong and strong strategy to kick it on. I honestly don't see how fans scrambling a couple of million together just to keep the club alive is a viable option that will bring any form of success.

I don't think fans would buy into a vision to stay stagnant and sideways - I certainly wouldn't.  Whether the club is community owned or privately owned it should have a clearly laid out business strategy for growth off the field, which could include improving the matchday experience, a plan to build the attendances, better engagement with corporates, stadium development, better commercial use of club assets, community engagement and so on.  These things should happen regardless of who owns the club, and would give us an stronger infrastructure to support on the field success (eg getting to the championship) and make the club a more desirable prospect to a potential buyer.

Apologies for wanging on about Bath City again but under community ownership attendances have gone up from 600 to 1100, and annual losses are down from £139k to £20k.  OK it's a much smaller operation but these improvements are purely down to better business management.  And as someone else has said here, there are other routes to financing growth which may have better terms than those currently being made available to the present owner.

I guess it comes down to how ambitious we are as fans, and how accepting we are of the status quo.  As I said before I would love a wealthy new owner to come and save the club and pump 20 mill into it... but where are they?
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theakston2k

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« Reply #25 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 10:54:21 »


Apologies for wanging on about Bath City again but under community ownership attendances have gone up from 600 to 1100, and annual losses are down from £139k to £20k.  OK it's a much smaller operation but these improvements are purely down to better business management.  And as someone else has said here, there are other routes to financing growth which may have better terms than those currently being made available to the present owner.

You keep using Bath as an example but they are 17th in the National League South, they may have balanced their finances a bit but on the pitch they are going backwards. Ultimately we all support a football club, not a business and a lot of Town fans have absolutely no interest in the financial side so celebrating minimal losses whilst at risk of getting relegated to the Southern League doesn't seem a great advertisement!
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Bogus Dave
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« Reply #26 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 11:10:06 »

We should have the ambition of a side struggling at the bottom of the national league south

I think there’s plenty of case studies which show fan ownership doesn’t really work long term, unless one of the fans has more money than sense (e.g. lansdown)
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« Reply #27 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 11:48:43 »

You keep using Bath as an example but they are 17th in the National League South, they may have balanced their finances a bit but on the pitch they are going backwards. Ultimately we all support a football club, not a business and a lot of Town fans have absolutely no interest in the financial side so celebrating minimal losses whilst at risk of getting relegated to the Southern League doesn't seem a great advertisement!

Perhaps, but a few years ago they were bankrupt and about to go out of business.  Sound familiar?  Whereas now they have a better balance sheet and the foundations to grow.  That's the point I'm trying to make.

On the pitch is a totally different matter, managers get hired and fired all the time regardless of the ownership model. 

Like I said before I think it comes down to how ambitious STFC fans are, or if we're happy to keep bleating on about how bad things are without actually doing anything other than hoping for the best. 
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pauld
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« Reply #28 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 11:53:31 »

We should have the ambition of a side struggling at the bottom of the national league south

I think there’s plenty of case studies which show fan ownership doesn’t really work long term, unless one of the fans has more money than sense (e.g. lansdown)
Working pretty well at Exeter, and that's been in Trust ownership a while. AFC Wimbledon had their club stolen out from under them and not only fought their way back up into the League but are now just about to pick up the keys to their new ground. You might not like their way of doing things, but it's working and it's a shit load more stable than we are. Not to mention most of the Bundesliga.

There are, of course, also some disastrous counter-examples, such as Stockport and Notts County.
« Last Edit: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 11:55:25 by pauld » Logged
Flashheart

« Reply #29 on: Thursday, February 11, 2021, 12:04:05 »

Bath City became a community club 3 1/2 years ago and are in the same league they were then. And near the bottom.

There might be good examples to get people on-board, but Bath City is not one of them. Quite why you want to keep on going there I just don't know.
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