Football club ownership: The Ebbsfleet model

[Pavilionaire]

Following on from Attila's comments re football clubs should be owned by the people, not the fat cat money men, I've was interested to read the latest on Ebbsfleet Utd and the MyFC scheme:

"EBBSFLEET United will aim to avoid a repeat of last summer's squad decimation by asking supporters to help them sign key players on new contracts.

The Fleet's entire squad will be out of contract after April 24, but chairman Duncan Holt revealed he will meet manager Liam Daish this week to prepare a list of personnel they want to keep.

Mr Holt said he hoped "a supporters' initiative" could generate enough cash to keep seven or eight of Fleet's best players.

Fleet's financial woes worsened as it emerged that just 800 of more than 4,000 MyFC members, whose membership was up for renewal last month, chose to continue their support.

The number of members has fallen to around 4,500, with the club planning to launch a share issue to raise enough money to see them out of this campaign and into the next one.

Mr Holt said: "We had somewhere in the region of 20 per cent renewing. We were obviously hoping for a lot more, but it gives us something to work with. We are waiting to see how it affects our cash flow.

"We will now focus on two things, the share issue, and getting momentum for a campaign to get the budget to re-sign seven or eight key players.

"It was clear from the supporters' forum that nobody wants a repeat of last year. I'll sit down with Liam and talk about who to keep and get some numbers, so we can put them to the supporters as soon as possible.

"Hopefully, at the end of April when the 43-week contacts are up, there will be seven or eight contracts covered by a fans' initiative."

Mr Holt said the share issue was a "completely separate thing", but added: "Where the money comes from doesn't matter - to sustain where we are and take care of the deficit we need between £200,000 and £250,000."

He revealed MyFC members would face a vote on a share issue in the coming weeks and said he hoped it would allow 75 per cent stakeholder MyFC to release some of its equity."



So, in less than 3 years the paying membership is less than a quarter of what it was originally, the average home attendance is 1,006 and the glory days of winning the FA Trophy in front of 26,000 fans are a world away.

I'm also mindful that AFC Wimbledon's average attendance is 3,697 so third in the Conference behind Luton and Oxford.

These examples show it's really about commitment, something the average football fan isn't that interested in.

 

[auschr]

I knew this was going to blow up the moment it started, I feel sorry for the real fans of Northfleet and Gravesend who seen their club turn into a sad gimmick. The BBC and everyone went mad for it and gave it much publicity, but everytime I hear about them since then it just gets worse and worse. They weren't in the relegation zone not too long either.

 

[Normal Rob]

I agree - sadly this was always on the cards and it's the genuine, original fans who have been shafted.

 

[Arthur]

Just goes to show Attila's comments are just idealistic nonsense.

 

[Tooting Gull]

I posted this on this subject on 14th November 2007. Not much has happened since to make me change my mind...

"Must admit, having listened to some genuine Ebbsfleet fans on the radio last night, I think the whole thing is a farcical gimmick.

Someone who has been going for 40 years and put thousands of pounds into the club suddenly has less say than a load of bored cyber-yuppies with a spare £35 and no connection to the area or club at all.

The manager immediately becomes a joke as far as selection goes, and the team is being picked by people who don't see the games.

And if it all goes tits up on wages or whatever in the future, the 'investors' will just go back to their proper club, and the real fans will be left to pick up the pieces (if there's anything left to pick up).

I'm glad it's not my club."

 

[strings]

I think the problem with the Ebbsfleet model is that the members aren't neccessarily fans. They are just people that were taken into the gimmick of part-owning a football team. As I understand the Barca model, the club is owned by the fans. It makes me glad that we are owned by fans and majority-owned by one particularly wealthy fan.

It strikes me that there are good owners such as Randy Learner and Bad owners - the Glazers, the Ebbsfleet model, and who could ever forget the demons of our past. I thought Atilla had a top rant the other day, but I'm not sure I would be able to propose a viable solution to the status quo.

It is a shame, and it seems to me the problem originates with football clubs being bought and sold (and treated) as normal businesses, which can be manipulated for profit and then sold on or left to fail.

 

[strings]

I posted this on this subject on 14th November 2007. Not much has happened since to make me change my mind...

A top prediction, you don't happen to know this weeks lottery number's per chance?

 

[Kukev31]

But the people who invested in Ebbsfleet didn't do it because they wanted to help run the club well. They did it because they thought they were going to get a chance to pick the squad etc.

A far better example of fans running the club in the model Attila suggested is FC United of Manchester.

 

[Titus]

Just goes to show Attila's comments are just idealistic nonsense.

Nothing wrong with ideals. You should try some.

 

[house your seagull]

FC United are a true co-operative, as said in their TSLR interview a year or so ago, at their level a co-operative is exciting but at league 2 level (where they want to be) it is groundbreaking.

 

[Arthur]

Nothing wrong with ideals. You should try some.

Prefer the real world pal.

 

[fatbadger]

Prefer the real world pal.

There are plenty of ideals in the real world. They are not mutually exclusive. And, besides, fan ownership is in the real world - there are hundreds of clubs around the world, many of them very successful, which are owned by the fans on a membership or co-op scheme.

As others have said, the problem is the Ebbsfleet model, not the principle of fan ownership. Indeed, the problem is the rarity of it in the UK; if all clubs were owned by the fans, then only genuine fans would own the clubs. Ebbsfleet attracted loads of people who liked the idea (for whatever reason) but only had one club to join, whether or not they had actually heard of them, let alone cared about them.

 

[attila]

Just goes to show Attila's comments are just idealistic nonsense.

Not at all, Arthur. Ebbsfleet's investors were/are for the most part not real fans, who grew up supporting Gravesend and Northfleet and care about their club as we do about the Albion, but (for the most part) well intentioned subscribers to an internet gimmick, nearly all supporters of another club and with no ties to the area, who lost interest when the novelty wore off. It doesn't show my comments are idealistic nonsense. It shows there is, quite literally, a world of difference between the internet and real life. Something we could all do well to remember!

 

[Pavilionaire]

Clubs like AFC Wimbledon, FC United Of Manchester, even Burnley show what can be achieved if the fans feel passionate about their clubs. However, in all 3 cases, you're talking about Wimbledon, Man Utd, Burnley - clubs with a special place in football history.

I think there are many clubs out there who've achieved next to nothing in the history of the game and are therefore unlikely to either engender sufficient commitment from the fans or encourage would-be investors to part with their cash.

In those cases is "ownership by the fans" just delaying the inevitable? I don't want to see any club go out of business, but in these days of wall to wall Premier League and Champions League how the hell are clubs like Chester, Bury, Wrexham, Cambridge, Mansfield going to be able to attract enough fans to be viable?

 

[attila]

Clubs like AFC Wimbledon, FC United Of Manchester, even Burnley show what can be achieved if the fans feel passionate about their clubs. However, in all 3 cases, you're talking about Wimbledon, Man Utd, Burnley - clubs with a special place in football history.

I think there are many clubs out there who've achieved next to nothing in the history of the game and are therefore unlikely to either engender sufficient commitment from the fans or encourage would-be investors to part with their cash.

In those cases is "ownership by the fans" just delaying the inevitable? I don't want to see any club go out of business, but in these days of wall to wall Premier League and Champions League how the hell are clubs like Chester, Bury, Wrexham, Cambridge, Mansfield going to be able to attract enough fans to be viable?

Well, I've done benefit gigs for 3 of that lot They will survive (or in Chester's case, re-emerge) because there are enough dedicated fans who care enough to keep the club going in some form, and because in some cases they will have the backing of the local authority who will help them. Whether they will ever be 'viable' as in 'successful at Football League level again' is a moot point.

As I say, football is eating itself, right down to the grass roots where even at the lowest levels many players (and players' agents) are demanding more than cubs can afford and not giving a sh8t about the consequences - another aspect of the 'me first' society. The founding principle should be 'live within your means' i.e. at whatever level of the game your resources allow. Better to be a successful Conference South outfit than go out of business trying to survive in the Fourth Division. And wait for the crash when the bottom drops out of the game and you're better off than all the teams who shelled out the massive salaries and have to do what you did a few years later!

 

[Arthur]

Not at all, Arthur. Ebbsfleet's investors were/are for the most part not real fans, who grew up supporting Gravesend and Northfleet and care about their club as we do about the Albion, but (for the most part) well intentioned subscribers to an internet gimmick, nearly all supporters of another club and with no ties to the area, who lost interest when the novelty wore off. It doesn't show my comments are idealistic nonsense. It shows there is, quite literally, a world of difference between the internet and real life. Something we could all do well to remember!

Ebbsfleet aside the bottom line is you need money to run a football club whether you or anyone else likes it. Letting the fans run a club is wonderful in theory and would probably make a watchable Sunday afternoon feature for those at the odeon where they win the cup and the guy gets the girl at the end. Thankfully we've got a guy with money who has an association with the club. But lets say he'd not been there would you have wanted us to turn away money from Hank Moneybags III or Ivor Loadsadoshski had Tony Bloom not been there to bail us out?

 

[fataddick]

The Ebbsfleet 'model' failed largely as a result of the actions of a handful of members. In Animal Farm stylee, five or six members (plus the guy who set up MyFC in the first place) decided they knew better than the rest of the membership, and started deciding what people could or couldn't vote on.

Even before the Ebbsfleet takeover, it was clear that the 33,000 members had been sold a lie. We were told we would have a choice of four or five clubs to take over; as it was the choice was "Ebbsfleet or nothing". We were told Ebbsfleet United was losing 400k a year, in actual fact the sum was 800k a year (quite a difference, and something that only became apparent a year down the line). Original promises like 'pick the team' - controversial, but clearly one of the things that drew so many people to join in the first place - were pretty much ignored.

Anyone who asked too many questions - such as myself - was simply banned from the message boards (on the simple say so of the out-of-work journalist who set MyFC up). A mass cull of around twenty of the most vocal non-ruling clique members on one day made it clear to everyone else just what sort of a system MyFC was being run by. "Putin democracy" as someone christened it.

The net effect was that the membership fell from 33k in the first year to 9.5k in the second, and they have just entered the third year with around 4k members (this number dropping daily). There's a shortfall of around £150k to even run the club to the end of the season, hence they are now looking to become a limited company and sell shares, with one or two of the richer members like to be become majority owners. They're essentially returning to a normal method of club ownership, with the whole 'internet community-run' angle having very visibly failed.

Is that because they weren't local fans? On the contrary, MyFC ran EUFC too much for the benefit of local fans, so keen were they not to alienate them. So the views of a core of about 800 people who attended games - whether they belonged to MyFC or not - were listened to in place of the 33,000 members. That's why such things as 'pick the team' (justly unpopular with Ebbsfleet fans) were dropped, causing membership to drop to levels where MyFC can no longer finance the club. When it became clear that Ebbsfleet's debt accrual had been vastly underestimated, instead of looking to sell the club on and buy someone more financially realistic (as a truly independent internet community ought to be able to) the MyFC poiltbureau were so wedded to the Ebbsfleet fanbase, any such suggestions were immediately laughed off. MyFC had quite simply become a collective giving free money to Ebbsfleet United FC, nothing more and nothing less.

So what became of the circa £1.5m (plus various other whiprounds) the internet geeks have pumped into MyFC to date? Around £350k went to Will Brooks, the guy who set up the website (and his company), around £600-700k went to the previous Chairman Brian Kilcullen, and the rest went on maintaining the debt. Kilcullen, incidentally, was recently offered the club back for free and refused. He is also, despite the financial turmoil Ebbsfleet are in, insisting that the 40-50k a year he is still owed (for the next 13 years) as part of the purchase agreement is paid, ie money that would keep Ebbsfleet going for a month will instead be going into his pocket.

You can talk till you're blue in the face about "community ownership models", but (in this country at least) the greediest, wealthiest and/or most ego-driven handful of individuals will always take control (and any potential profit) no matter what the ideals of the original model were. C'est la vie.

 

[Gwylan]

The Ebbsfleet 'model' failed largely as a result of the actions of a handful of members...
You can talk till you're blue in the face about "community ownership models", but (in this country at least) the greediest, wealthiest and/or most ego-driven handful of individuals will always take control (and any potential profit) no matter what the ideals of the original model were. C'est la vie.

Top post. It was good hearing some of the details of this.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Great post FatAddick, I like the 'Animal Farm' analogy.

 

[perseus]

I would like to see a supporter's representative on the Board of Directors. And not a Horseman.

In Animal Farm the Pigs were in control and they made a pig's ear of it.