Eventual Supporter-led ownership.

Nelson!

Nelson!

Striker
Is it achievable for a club the size of ours?

I imagine we'd have to fall a bit further for the amount of money needed to be realistic but that might be about to happen under the current leadership.

There were rumours that explayers had shows interest in buying the club before SD. Maybe they could provide the capital for a group to bring the club back to the people who support it? Fullwell 73 is another potential source of backing.

I feel utterly pessimistic about SD, especially given his doubling down on how great a job his mates are doing. Not sure a supporter owned group could perform much worse.
 


There were a few clubs that became PLCs in the 90s with stock market listings, including us. As far as I am aware, all of them I can think of are now in the hands of single owners or a small number of investors. What was it that went wrong with that model at the time (I'm too young to have had much awareness of the business side of football at the time - just)? And did all of those clubs / PLCs have a majority owner when they were public?

There was us, Spurs, West Ham, maybe Arsenal and Millwall (a penny stock) at least - possibly others.
 
It's entirely doable, provided fans put their hands in their pockets and you get some businessmen fans to put up larger amounts.

Pompey did a share scheme where fans bought shares of a grand each, and we raised 2.5 million.

It will depend on Donald selling cheap, and fans being willing to accept years with no money, however you accept shit football better when you own your club, and you know people are trying for the good of the club as opposed to their own pocket.
 
chave said:
It's entirely doable, provided fans put their hands in their pockets and you get some businessmen fans to put up larger amounts.

Pompey did a share scheme where fans bought shares of a grand each, and we raised 2.5 million.

It will depend on Donald selling cheap, and fans being willing to accept years with no money, however you accept shit football better when you own your club, and you know people are trying for the good of the club as opposed to their own pocket.
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Sounds like a decent route to go down in all honesty. It's obvious benefactors with profit as a motive can't be trusted to run the club competently.
 
Maybe, but the price would be becoming a lower league club in terms of setup and budget, and having expectations of only ever playing in League One/Two with the occasional foray into the Championship. Pompey didn't stay fan owned because of how financially shafted we would have been in League One as a fan owned club (we'd have been stuck with a bottom half budget)

You'd have to get rid of the Academy for sure,not realistic to have a £2m a year academy setup as a fan owned club on even your attendances. Portsmouth last had a £3.5m annual wage budget when a fan owned club, Sunderland spend something like £15m a year on wages.....
 
heroesof73 said:
I would happily chip in. I would rather lose some of my money in this way than contribute to the current set up in any fashion!
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I agree with the Pompey fan, as a fanbase it's not realistic to think we somehow have the resources to prop up, invest and run the club.

Buying out entire assets like the SoL and AoL, this is going to put it out of everyone's reach, and as collective fanbase we're not known for being wealthy either.

But if SAFC was listed publicly as a company again with shares for sale I would be prepared to buy in meaningfully. The pride of being a part of SAFC would outstrip for me any short term hits on investment brought about by the club's misfortunes.
 
A variation on the Bundesliga 50+1 rule would work in my opinion.

Where a supporter consortium holds overall voting rights but external investment is possible but never to the extent of overall ownership.

In Germany supporters pay an annual fee to have a voters share. Then under one share, one vote the supporter bases voice is heard where majority rules in any vote. It’s informal rule but all Bundesliga subscribe even though Red Bull Leipzig are bending the rules massively!

Amount of shares and cost of annual fee to be decided upon buy the supporter trust (or whatever you want to call it).

50,000 shares with an annual fee of a grand and we can keep the lifts running!
 
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Also it's never going to happen, Portsmouth went fan owned without owning a training ground, in massive debt, and with a stadium possibly worth negative money (needed millions of pounds of repairs to stay open and the council wouldn't approve any other use in that location for the site)

Sunderland have big assets like the Academy of Light and the Stadium of Light that would be valued at tens of millions of pounds.
The Pompey fans brought our club for £5.6m. Sunderland could well cost ten times that amount realistically.
chave said:
It's entirely doable, provided fans put their hands in their pockets and you get some businessmen fans to put up larger amounts.

Pompey did a share scheme where fans bought shares of a grand each, and we raised 2.5 million.

It will depend on Donald selling cheap, and fans being willing to accept years with no money, however you accept shit football better when you own your club, and you know people are trying for the good of the club as opposed to their own pocket.
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To be fair half of the money in the Pompey example was put up by local businessmen like Iain McInnes so it wasn't out and out fan ownership.

If Sunderland fans wanted to go full fan ownership, and working on the basis of £56m being the amount they'd need to buy the club and put enough money in cover the losses for a couple of seasons, they'd need to sell 56,000 shares at £1000. It would be very hard to find that many people with that kind of money laying around willing to put it in to SAFC.
 
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chave said:
It's entirely doable, provided fans put their hands in their pockets and you get some businessmen fans to put up larger amounts.

Pompey did a share scheme where fans bought shares of a grand each, and we raised 2.5 million.

It will depend on Donald selling cheap, and fans being willing to accept years with no money, however you accept shit football better when you own your club, and you know people are trying for the good of the club as opposed to their own pocket.
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He values the club at 3 times what he paid for it, despite having no parachute money to come, so saleable assets, a rapidly diminishing crowd and sitting mid table in League One. That ain't happening, mate.
 
PompeyFan657 said:
Also it's never going to happen, Portsmouth went fan owned without owning a training ground, in massive debt, and with a stadium possibly worth negative money (needed millions of pounds of repairs to stay open and the council wouldn't approve any other use in that location for the site)

Sunderland have big assets like the Academy of Light and the Stadium of Light that would be valued at tens of millions of pounds.
The Pompey fans brought our club for £5.6m. Sunderland could well cost ten times that amount realistically.


To be fair half of the money in the Pompey example was put up by local businessmen like Iain McInnes so it wasn't out and out fan ownership.

If Sunderland fans wanted to go full fan ownership, and working on the basis of £56m being the amount they'd need to buy the club and put enough money in cover the losses for a couple of seasons, they'd need to sell 56,000 shares at £1000. It would be very hard to find that many people with that kind of money laying around willing to put it in to SAFC.
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We could probably have done it 2 year back by using a load of parachute (ie intended to help) money to buy the club.
 
It depends what your goals are for the club. If you want to see Sunderland as a community and civic asset, a hub of activity and a focal point for the area then sure, it's possible. But it puts a definite ceiling on what you're able to achieve.

You'd basically be giving up on the idea of ever consistently playing in the top flight, or probably the Championship, accepting selling your best players, and probably never winning a major trophy again. I personally think there's a lot of merit to it, and I'd probably be willing to accept the trade-off if it meant that the club existed for the benefit of the people of the city and the wider region. But you'd have to be very very clear about what you were giving up, because if you didn't get majority buy-in to the sacrifices you were making then people would end up very very unhappy indeed.
 
RightFootLeftFoot said:
It depends what your goals are for the club. If you want to see Sunderland as a community and civic asset, a hub of activity and a focal point for the area then sure, it's possible. But it puts a definite ceiling on what you're able to achieve.

You'd basically be giving up on the idea of ever consistently playing in the top flight, or probably the Championship, accepting selling your best players, and probably never winning a major trophy again. I personally think there's a lot of merit to it, and I'd probably be willing to accept the trade-off if it meant that the club existed for the benefit of the people of the city and the wider region. But you'd have to be very very clear about what you were giving up, because if you didn't get majority buy-in to the sacrifices you were making then people would end up very very unhappy indeed.
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Im out!

Too used to winning major trophies!;);)
 

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