Eh? What’s this? An SW19 update during the week?
I’m posting this the day after the second SGM which will very likely give the go-ahead for 50+1.
Or the day the ultimate Fans Club passes its second phase of votes to allow up to 49.99% of equity to be sold to those evil outside investors.
Especially as we’ve spent the last two decades telling anyone who cares to listen that we’ve successfully repelled anyone who’s had even a remote sniff.
Assuming there isn’t a massive spanner in the works, I’m going ahead and publishing something I’ve written for a couple of weeks. And waited a lot longer for it to happen.
Just like that, the club’s modus operandi has changed forever. A day that was perhaps never supposed to happen has done exactly that.
And perhaps most telling of the lot – it’s gone through without so much of a whimper.
It’s 50.01 we’ve given the collective green light to, although for convenience sake it will be referred to as 50+1.
There were still a few pockets of resistance, but it will always be notable how many people voted, and what percentages they turned out to be.
The turnout numbers don’t lie, and neither do those who voted in favour.
Of course, we’re not immediately going to see REMBE’s face plastered all over the media, if that’s what you’re now expecting.
Any potential investor has to go to a future DT meeting and get voted through. Those who don’t want to do that probably aren’t going to be who we want in anyway.
That might take a month, it might take six months, it may even never happen at all.
I doubt the last case scenario is going to happen, especially as the club itself has said there’s been about ten interested parties.
I also doubt that if there’s that many potential suitors, they wouldn’t have got wind that it’s worthwhile having initial talks with us.
One could now as to why this has got voted through and in such high numbers too. The answer to that is a simple one – timing.
Football is now at a crossroads when it comes to finances. As said so many times on SW19, running a professional outfit is a very expensive business these days.
Wages are high, getting higher, and if you’re being honest – they’re not going to come down by the thousands.
If 23 clubs in a division start paying “sensible” wages, it only takes the 24th club to outbid the rest, and the balance sheets start looking painful to read again.
Also, how many of these eyewatering financial accounts are genuine debt, and how much of them are what the accountants put down remains to be seen…
In our case, our lack of funds (cashflow especially) has finally bitten us in the arse, and everyone has noticed.
While returning home to Plough Lane saved the club in so many ways, it did rip off the veneer of funding a multi-million pound enterprise with the equivalent of a paper round.
There wasn’t really one major event that changed so many minds over the duration over this. For the most part, any resistance was chipped away.
Realising that we were generating a lot from Plough Lane but having little difference to our spending power focused the minds.
That on top of the rank and file twigging that we were footballing paupers – and not in a romantic way – and being poor because of our own setup finally ground the gears too much.
If I was to pinpoint the time when selling equity became inevitable though, it was the first Plough Lane bond being launched.
One well known funder made the point in a rather emotionally charged meeting that outside investment was a good idea. A viewpoint that was received with some hostility.
Penny for the thoughts of said funder right now? He wasn’t wrong, but then he was somebody who understood business and finance.
Something that is still considered a bit of a crime in certain quarters.
People should have listened to him more back then, but they weren’t in the mood to. Nor did people want to listen to any thoughts of 50+1 until about two or three years ago.
It’s quite interesting, thinking about it, how the view of doing something like this has changed so quickly.
It might simply be that often-cited “generational gap” that is becoming more and more apparent. Especially if you go to away games.
The lads who create some impressively different chants have been given DT membership voting rights, as I’m not certain they would have prioritised buying “ownership” if required.
That might do a dis-service though, because I think throughout the support base there’s a belief that it’s time to move on.
The reasons for that have been stated above, but not only have people accepted 50+1, they’re looking forward to it.
When John Green and his consortium put in £1m, nobody battered an eyelid. If anything, it felt “normal” for somebody to come in like that.
Football fans generally are used to big money investors coming in, and ours are no different.
Yes, you can argue the morality of some funders throughout various clubs, but it’s nothing new (Louis Edwards springs to mind here).
For us, there’s a wide acceptance that the current ownership model has reached the end of its shelf life, and it’s hard not to be a tad excited when the first prospective investor pops along to a DT meeting.
We don’t need to be so poor. Poverty is grinding and demoralising at the best of times, and in our case it almost felt like a lifestyle choice.
50+1 will change the club, and the Dons Trust especially. Granted, it continues to push the “we’re still fan-owned” mantra, and the biggest irony is that it might give it a new lease of life.
Let’s be honest here, it’s not been “our” club for a very long time. The DT itself hasn’t really been responsive to the “club owners”, and the important decisions get taken from the PLC anyway.
Voting turnouts for both elections and most votes are pretty lame at the best of times, and I remain unconvinced the majority of support ever fully bought into “fan ownership”.
Maybe between 2002-2007 it did. The cataclysm of 2002 still scarred us, and it gave us stability.
Some wore (and still do) wore our ownership model as a badge of honour, coming across as thinking it mattered more than on-field stuff.
But so many other clubs tried similar around that time, and quickly abandoned them, leaving just ourselves and Exeter as the two exceptions.
The DT itself has long had the dirty little secret that if it disappeared tomorrow most people would get over it within a couple of days maximum.
Once an investor gets the OK, that too will change drastically.
Suddenly, those elected to its board will have a consortium sitting across the table from them (perhaps literally).
Right now, if they don’t like something the punters want, they can just ignore them. It’s harder to ignore a party who has as much ownership clout as they do, but with a helluva lot more money.
The DT could well be a useful tool still, but it now needs to be a lot more business friendly and a lot less “political”.
A good start would be the next elections, where people with actual business backgrounds get to stand, and get elected.
Perhaps some of its current semi-irrelevance is because it’s seen as a cross between the Department of Administrative Affairs and a local branch of the Green Party.
It needs to up its game, and if it drives away the wannabe politicians and Gender Studies students then even better.
Perhaps the biggest question of all now is – why would anyone want to come in and buy a stake?
Clearly, people do want to buy into lower league football clubs. There’s been enough changes of ownerships in recent years, so there’s obviously a reason.
Philanthropy? Business opportunities? Accountancy reasons? Who knows, but it’s an interesting question you never fully get the answer to.
In our case, I wouldn’t entirely be surprised if a big investor turns out to be somebody who’s put money into us before.
The obvious choice might be Nick Robertson, who you imagine would know a couple of other very rich people.
What’s in it for them if they decide to become proper investors at AFCW though? Or anyone else?
Quite a bit, as it goes.
Firstly, if the let’s-quickly-raise-some-cash-via-Republic scheme is anything to go by, the value of the club is nearly £27m.
Well, it’s a value of the club – whether that’s what it’s actually worth I don’t know, and there’s probably some constitutional or accountancy reason why that’s not the case.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s that. Leyton Orient reportedly went for £19m, so it would be plausible
Yes, it’s a helluva lot of money for the vast majority of us. If you’re an investor though, or as part of a consortium, it’s probably not that much of a stretch. Especially if you’re not paying for it out of your own money.
AFCW wouldn’t be that bad to buy, because we don’t have humongous actual debts. Our wage bill is pretty low, relatively speaking.
We have the upkeep of PL, granted, but the training ground isn’t state of the art and I don’t think we own it.
Our problem is the amount we owe on the bonds (did the ironymeter just break?) and the real crippler of so many companies in cashflow.
Somebody who comes in who injects £2m during close season is already onto a winner, because that would make a lot of difference to us but not so much for anyone with decent wonga.
OK, there’s the question of what happens when there’s the first conflict between any new investor and “the fans”, but I’m sure you can point to instances where that’s happened with the DT.
And even then, it doesn’t seem to matter to the vast majority who voted for 50+1. Because why should anyone else care if they don’t?
Back to why somebody would invest in us, and there’s a lot of projects we need to do that could attract someone.
We need to sort out a better training ground, and if you’re somebody who deals in that side of things – why not buy into AFCW and become top dog in that particular scheme?
Likewise, there’s talk that the East Stand could be rebuilt with a hotel attached. If you’re in the procurement of sites for hotels, why not become a stakeholder in that venture?
There’s always reasons why investors buy into some of the most unlikely places.
Why did somebody like Luke Johnson buy into the GRA, and became a stakeholder in the dog track?
Why does Nick Robinson or the others invest in us to begin with? Why does anyone put any money into anything football related?
There’s something else to consider, and it’s soft power. And I think it’s why so many are prepared to buy into football clubs even if they’re Morecambe.
Picture the scene. You’re a multi-millionare who made his dough selling plastic seats to Stadium:MT. So you decide to invest in a proper football club.
You buy into Chortlington Railway, who have entered the EFL, and you get to go into the boardroom at home and away games.
It’s the first game of the new season, you’re in some Home Counties club and you’re introduced to their chairman Sir Cuthbert Cufflinks.
He’s 94 years old, made his money in Africa in the 1960s and still thinks it’s called Rhodesia. But he’s still got some of his marbles and more thumbs in pies there than you can shake a walking stick at.
You’re thinking of investing in that part of the world, and in just one afternoon you’ve found a new contact.
The next game, you’re at home against a small club from the Midlands, and you discover their new owner is a Californian called Brandon Crypto-Bro.
He’s loud, a bit brash, and has so much money from trading that he can afford trashy looking clothes.
Still, you speak to him in the boardroom, get an enthusiastic rundown of AI-powered quantitative trading, and you know who you’re going to call if you want somebody to partner with in that sphere.
Then, you go to your next venue and you get to meet Mustapha Billion, who is the sole Emir of a microstate dangerously near Iran.
You’re not sure how he got his money, and you’re not sure you want to ask. But you get speaking to him, discuss the current state of the world and you end up getting an “in” with his particular field.
See how it works? You’re not buying into a football club so much as you’re buying contacts with other extremely rich people.
My scenario is fictional, but I bet it’s close to how it really is in these boardrooms before and after games.
Whatever happens, AFCW is a different beast now. It will undeniably have new challenges, and 50+1 isn’t perfect.
In many ways, it feels like a compromise. It’s not selling out, because “the fans” theoretically still have the ultimate say.
It may well be buying time, kicking the proverbial can down the road.
50+1 may not even last that long once financial realities continue to bite. It may not be enough, and a full sale** will be needed.
** – though I expect the DT (or its equivalent) to hold 30-40% of shares and the ownership of PL in that scenario.
At the very least, we’ve now given ourselves a chance for some financial breathing space.
We might not be able to make Wrexham look like they’re from the poorhouse, but we couldn’t survive the very real pressures for much longer.
While some will remain uncomfortable over all this, the brutal truth is that the football industry has changed so much in the past two decades.
The world has moved on, and that’s not a crime. And neither is AFCW moving with those times as well.
This season alone has brought it home just how much far behind we’ve become, and the ordinary fan wants the gap bridged.
And it’s also potentially exciting as well.
The club has felt a bit stale for a good while, in terms of its hierarchy, and an injection of fresh blood at the decision making stage is no bad thing.
I expect there to be something this summer to perk people’s antenna up quicker than you can say “constitution”, and that will be a momentous day when it does.
Just as the move in 1963/64 from being amateur to being semi-professional ushered in a new era for WFC, 2025/26 may do the same for AFCW.
We’ll see what happens next. Although one thing I do hope – if we see a deluded individual going “My children” around the area again…