Anyone looking at Portsmouth’s playing record this season might be wondering if community ownership has helped them at all. A year ago, their fans were celebrating because their club belonged to them. This season they have sacked two managers and flirted with the relegation zone.
Fan ownership is not a magic solution to all the problems of a club but it does make a difference. An article in the Guardian describes how the “once-bankrupt institution is fast becoming a financial success story, no longer reliant upon sugar-daddy funding – with the coffers in their healthiest state for 40 years.” And that is making a difference to the whole community, not just to the club. On the anniversary of attaining community ownership, Pompey fans were given a chance to quiz the club chairman, chief executive, caretaker manager and a player.
Birmingham City fans would love to have a chance to ask questions to the people who run our club. We want our views to be heard. We hope that any new owner would realise this. The nationality of the owner isn’t the factor that determines whether that owner is good or bad. We believe that a good owner is one who is interested in the long term future of the club, understands the football business and knows that what is good for the fans is good for the club. Such an owner is most probably one with a connection and affection for the club and not someone who wants to buy any football club.
Links:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/apr/18/portsmouth-care-community-club-pompey
Obviously the financial side of any business has to be paramount to the success.
Portsmouth are only one year down the road and showing signs that it is working, though they were in fear of their League status for sometime this season, they have made the right decisions and look to build on this season.
The same happened at Swansea, now look at them, financially stable and in the Premiership.
So in answer to the question, yes it can work, whether it can work at BCFC is another question.
KRO+DNM
Fan ownership doesn’t work. It would be much better to have a combination of some real investors who care about the club and who will involve the fans. Problems at Pompey this season has been the people bought the club but had no plan B – ie invest in the team so what we have had is 2 failed managers and the worst football ever to be played at Fratton Park. Its a myth also to say the community owns the club too. We have 11 rich individuals who own 56% of the club actually. The rest in owned by people who bought a £1k share. Fans as owners doesn’t work. They get their mates in to do jobs rather than running it professionally. We have a bunch of do gooders running our club but sadly not interested in building it as a successful team.
Hey Mick, its bit too soon to know if it will work or not. A club with very little at the start of the season has sorted itself out to where there is justified optimism for next season and a following that amounts to more than many clubs outside the Premier League. Compare that with what might have happened and who knows what the future holds. Community clubs have been successful in the European Leagues, why should the UK be any different ?
I think we can ignore the “Mick Williams” comment as the author’s name was chosen to suggest this was written by PFC Director Mick Williams when clearly it’s not.
Reading the “Mick Williams” comments and it’s easy to argue against those points with facts based on the true situation. Fan ownership does work and is a million times better than what we had before (i.e. Chanrai). Worse football ever? Maybe but not any more. The community does own the club as all owners are PFC fans, not people with no interest in the long term club future.
Basically the post is as idiotic as they come.
Fan ownership on its own doesn’t work. You need some serious cash to invest in the team.
Who owns Pompey – well 11 rich guys of which the other Mick Williams is one of them. Coupled with that a certain Staurt Robinson (who ISNT a POMPEY FAN) but a property developer tied up in the Tesco development is one of these and only in it for the return. So the hyporacy around fan ownership goes on !!!!
Look at the Pompey’s CEO report own report today on the PST stating that rich guys are funding the club NOT the community. Soon as always someone will have more money to invest so we will be owned by a couple of people not thousands!!!!
Catlin writes
“We have successfully managed to source external funding for much of our capital expenditure this past season via the purchase of additional shares by our Presidents and the PST, and the club owes all of those that have continued to invest in the club a huge thank you for enabling these essential works to take place during our first year of trading and beyond.”
Oh and as usual a fan owned club is one where anyone who disagrees will be shot down and vilified as free speech doesnt exist. Many people are only interested in the TEAM and if you aren’t prepared to invest in the product in todays game you aren’t going to keep the punters happy.
Invest in the team? We can’t buy anyone thanks to the financial situation we are in. However we are investing in the team, we just can’t do it as much as we’d like as we are paying players off. However playing budget has increased over the course of the season and will continue to increase as revenue increases and debts decrease.
Punters seem very happy with the current state of play on the pitch.
For the sake of clarity, the Mick Williams posting earlier is not me.
Pompey is owned by 14 shareholders, of which one is the Pompey Supporters Trust and one is indeed Stuart Robinson who also wants the club to do well. All others shareholders are Pompey fans. The club is owned by the fans, of that there is no doubt!
Does Community ownership make a difference? Yes it does!
Mick
For the sake of clarify I am not the Mick Williams PFC Director and my name is Mick Williams.
This is what you get with these people they become paranoid if you dare to challenge them on anything.
Fan ownership does not work and does not make a real difference. It breads nepotism and power and influence in the hands of a few rich people who happen to be fans. They are there for themselves only sadly and not for the good of the city. They needed to invest in the team and show real professionalism but sadly they didnt which meant 2 managers later (Mick Williams heavily involved in the solection process) shows what unprofessional people who think they know about football bring. They brought the worst football team to have ever worn the Pompey blue. Now if Birmingham want to follow their failed example then more fool them. I would suggest you get the right level of investment in from a “genuine” rich guy and ally your fan base to that.
Its where Pompey will be heading anyhow regardless of these 14 people who currently own it anyhow.
So no fan ownership doesn’t work it just creates a club for the few.
I have a feeling your name is Chris.
Fan ownership does work,as a Pompey fan our finances are the best they have been for many many years. Have mistakes been made? Yes but have we progressed off the field,most certainly yes. All 3 managers have been backed with players,we have a new training ground being built. We are paying debts off 8 months earlier than forecast. Our average gate this season 15,000.
Mick Williams, the impersonator: genuine “rich guys” don’t exist in all but the rare case and the “rich guys” were the ones that ruined PFC and brought it to its knees. Investment from “rich guys” just means “loan the club money at a rate of interest and at some point I want the money back”. The “rich guy” Carston Young, who owned Birmingham, was convicted of money laundering and was mainly responsible for their current financial plight. That “rich guy” didn’t work and neither did any of the “rich guys” at PFC. If you think any different, you are clearly not living on Planet Earth.
Get the club in the hands of fans who care about it rather than these outsiders/”rich guys” who are mostly in it for a quick buck.
What brum need to understand is our high net worth investors have put money in to ensure they get their dividend when we sell. They are no different from Yeung as they are in it to make money . Trouble is they don’t want to invest any in the team . We had a great consortium ready to properly invest but these guys blocked as they see a way to get their hands on football cash. (Edited………)
They are all Pompey fans who won’t cash in. They have invested hugely in the team,backed each manager with new players.
There was no consortium to buy Pompey – the people referred too here were laughed out of court. The ‘fan’ typing this is well known troll I’m afraid.
In reply to MW, the impersonator.
“Fan ownership does not work and does not make a real difference.”
It does work, look at Swansea and Pompey where fans are turning up in their thousands knowing their money is going to the club not some off shore bank account. We are way ahead of re-paying the debt. We have made loads of improvements at PFC which saw a sold out crowd last weekend.
“It breads nepotism and power and influence in the hands of a few rich people who happen to be fans. They are there for themselves only sadly and not for the good of the city. ”
No they’re not. They’re PFC fans. They have paid back the council £1.2m loan. The city has just honoured the club/PST with an award. You’re talking arse.
“They needed to invest in the team and show real professionalism but sadly they didnt which meant 2 managers later (Mick Williams heavily involved in the solection process) shows what unprofessional people who think they know about football bring.”
Everyone makes mistakes. They actually made two good decisions in removing Whittingham and Barker and are now reaping the rewards with Awford. We have avoided relegation, we can now begin to plan for next season.
“They brought the worst football team to have ever worn the Pompey blue”
No we haven’t. We are unable to pay any transfer fees as stipulated by the football league so we bought no one. We came out of admin late in the transfer window meaning most of the decent players were taken by other clubs. We were playing catch up. We had a mid-table player budget for wages which has got bigger during the season. Awford has stated he is happy with the squad, think it has quality and with decent management we’re now unbeaten in 5 games.
“Now if Birmingham want to follow their failed example then more fool them. I would suggest you get the right level of investment in from a “genuine” rich guy and ally your fan base to that”
Genuine “rich guys” rarely exist and if they do they are very rare. “Rich guys” actually means “rich people with money who loan money to the club at a rate of interest and at some point they want the money back”. Carston Young was one such owner and after he was convicted for money laundering, look where Birmingham are now. Chanrai and the rest were “rich guys” and more like a cancer eating the club from the inside. “Rich guys” rarely work in football.
“Its where Pompey will be heading anyhow regardless of these 14 people who currently own it anyhow. So no fan ownership doesn’t work it just creates a club for the few.”
See above. You’re talking utter crap. Fan ownership does work.
Mick Williams the non-director has a poor grasp on the idea of a community club.
The aim of community clubs is to run on a sustainable, not-for-profit basis – which is the stated aim of Portsmouth Community Football Club Ltd. The chief aim is sustain the club in the community, for the benefit of the community.
From being on the verge of liquidation with no infrastructure, minimal income and 3 registered players – having been stripped bare by a succession of ‘genuinely rich’ owners – to where we are now with a training ground in the pipeline, L2 status assured and a future worth looking forward to, has been a long and difficult battle. A battle in which gaining control of the club was only the start.
All money put into the club has been equity in the form of non-dividend paying shares. The Pompey Trust holds the controlling power in shareholder voting in an ownership model not unlike that of Swansea.
All profits made by the club go back into the business. Currently a large chunk of any extra profit we have made goes towards paying off the football creditors. Once that final debt is cleared the club will benefit greatly from the level of fan support it has. Average gates of over 15,000 in L2 show you this is indeed a club supported by its community. We have the potential to be one of the best funded teams in L1 & 2. Without breaking the Salary Protocol Rules.
We are lucky that some of our fans believe in the community ethos and can afford to fund the club for no return. Some 2000 of them have done it through community shares in the Trust. We have had to budget cautiously in Year 1. The board have admitted that, and admitted that the managerial appointments were problematic. But we have come out of our first season stronger, ahead of financial forecasts and with the makings of a team that can challenge next year.
By comparison to other seasons since the 2008 cup win it all seems positive.
Fan ownership can work, as long as the fans have the interests of the club at heart and are not discouraged by the ‘success at any costs’ mentality from those fans who have been seduced by the Sky-backed, unsustainable and fatally flawed ‘private ownership’ model of football finance.
p.s.
LOL – I missed this bit first read through …
“We had a great consortium ready to properly invest but these guys blocked as they see a way to get their hands on football cash.”
By too ‘a great consortium ready to properly invest’ did you mean one which could ‘see a way to get their hands on football cash’ themselves? Or where they a bunch of lovely philanthropists who wanted to give Portsmouth a football club?
I would be very interested to know how your consortium was planning to fund their bid. I only know of one consortium that came forward in all the time the Trust and their partners were working to buy the club. As I recall it, a high court judge had something very scathing to say about the proof of funds from that particular group.
In the case of PFC I guess we will all find out over the course of the next few years if Community Ownership works. However the alternative for Pompey was oblivion. If Birmingham are that big a draw card for a future rich investor then good luck. As the stakes to be part of the Premier League get higher and higher Community ownership may be the only way for clubs, unable to gain a benefactor, to survive.
To dismiss the concept despite its success in Europe is subjective and without precedence. Time will tell.
Fans ownership doesn’t work.
As you can see from PFCDave’s responses what it breeds is hatred and vile. In any club you get a vociferous few who crowd out the genuine fans with threats and personal attacks if you don’t agree with them. These fans have rose tinted glasses and can NEVER see their leaders doing anything wrong.
Pompey is owned in the main by 14 people some of which happen to be fans. They had to involve a property developer as they invested to ensure they would get a benefit from a proposed Tesco development which they totally screwed up.
The gave us the WORST football ever seen at Fratton Park this season as they weren’t prepared to invest in the team.
If you want a club full of nepotism and local chancers waiting to make some money for themselves and not really care about the team then go down this route. If you want hope of a successful team then get real genuine investors in.
Fan ownership doesnt work for the many but it will for the few –