[Football] Czech Billionnaire buying stake in West Ham

[wokingone]

27% share in West Ham about to be sold to a czech Billionnaire with a full sale in the future. Premier league becoming a Billionnaire's play thing (if it is not already). Being able to compete will become harder, if we ever get sold to a foreign owner with no previous connections to the club then at that point I will be out.

 

[Springal]

Tony Bloom must be a billionaire - or close to it. Don't worry to much

 

[A1X]

Premier league becoming a Billionnaire's play thing (if it is not already).

Has been ever since Jack Walker at Blackburn in the mid-1990s. He properly set the ball rolling on that one.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Has been ever since Jack Walker at Blackburn in the mid-1990s. He properly set the ball rolling on that one.

Ever since Littlewoods - owners of Everton.

Didn't do them a huge amout of good(ison) to be fair. And then they moved their money across Stanley Park.

The last Czech billionaire to attempt to invest in football was the bouncing Czech himself, Captain Bob Maxwell. Thames Valley Royals. That went well

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

Will they be writing the cheques?

 

[Stat Brother]

We are living in an age where everything is owned by billionaires - not just football clubs.

NSC included.

 

[Live by the sea]

Has been ever since Jack Walker at Blackburn in the mid-1990s. He properly set the ball rolling on that one.

Jack walker - apparently a very down to earth man . He had a massive house in Fulham in the early 90’s that I went to once as a guy I knew was looking after the house whilst he was away in the Bahamas for a few weeks .

 

[el punal]

We are living in an age where everything is owned by billionaires - not just football clubs.

Not my soul they haven’t.

 

[Superphil]

Premier league becoming a Billionnaire's play thing (if it is not already). .

Has been for years now, Abramovich, Kroenke, Mansour, John Henry, The Glazers, Joe Lewis, Bloom, Al-Rumayyan, very few clubs are not bankrolled by billionaire+ owners, and we are one of them. That said, it's no guarantee, Randy Lerner had a go at Villa and didn't really succeed.

 

[seagull 1979]

Will they be writing the cheques?

Should have been signing the cheques

 

[Swansman]

Has been ever since Jack Walker at Blackburn in the mid-1990s. He properly set the ball rolling on that one.

You could back to the 80s, really. Until then football was run in reasonably sound ways by reasonably wealthy men. In the 1980s the whole "market revolution" thing came around and people, including football owners, started to borrow money like mad men thinking it was not a very risky thing to do. Transfer fees increased rapidly, as did player wages, while little thought was given to the long term: no one reflected about how these debts were eventually going to be paid, no one bothered to maintain the deteriorating physical infrastructures of the clubs with stadiums becoming increasingly hazardous and safety issues either being "solved" with cheap solutions or not at all.

Eventually the inevitable happens and you enter the 90s with a massive need for change and limited resources to do anything about it. What could have been solved with continous small investment now needs money few ordinary businessmen can provide. Manchester City is a good example: Peter Swales creating gigantic debt during his 1973-1993 years as chairman, a wealthy-but-still-not-very-wealthy businessman like Francis Lee taking over and realising that there is nothing to do, retaining his ownership but giving over the club to David Bernstein with the sole purpose of making it stable enough until someone with enough cash to solve all the issues could be found (namely the Thai bloke).

The catastrophic way of running the clubs in the 1980s pretty much forced the development since: commersialisation and the eternal search for investment, often in order for the clubs to survive. You could say it ended up quite well with new stadiums, fat TV deals and a great league, but it came with costs - some known (such as the necessity to look at shady places abroad to save these clubs), some that could be the discussed (how does mcdonaldsization impact peoples relation to football and society?), some that are yet to be seen (what happens with these billion pound football clubs if the football toy is eventually deemed unfashionable?).

 

[Hampster Gull]

He owns a good chunk of Royal Mail and Sainsbury's, and hasn't been in a rush to take control, but lets see where he goes