The Sunday Herald has been in top form recently with fantastic articles on how football clubs would be better off being in the hands of their customers fans.
Phil Gordon wrote - ”Fans in Germany carry considerable weight, which is why there are standing areas in stadia and cheap tickets of just €5 to make it the world’s best-supported league.”
Five stories this week on the subject with the best from Ian Bell – http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/rangers/failed-capitalists-shouldn-t-be-entrusted-to-run-football-clubs-1.929667
Superb.
If it is ok for Rangers, why not for everyone else?
If you ever attend a Bundesliga match, you’ll work out why it’s the best supported in the world. Standing areas, fans’ leader pertched atop a fence leading the singing, beer, and bored riot plice watching. What does all that add up to? A great atmosphere and zilch crowd trouble. Our Elfin Safety brigade would have a collective coronary if they attended a German match.
All German clubs are member organisations where what we call boards of directors in this country are elected every 3 seasons with no-one being able to serve more than 2 terms of office. It’s a condition of league entry.
The Spanish football authorities are now looking to adopt a similar practice following the success of Barcelona (all hail), Real Mardrid and Athletico Bilbao.
I read Ian Bell’s article after seeing the link posted here ; the man makes much sense, which is unusual for a Herald journalist.
Of course, I’m biased.
I remember the supporters direct conference a couple of years ago when the rep from Germany explained how their clubs were run the look on her face when we told her that home clubs keep all the gate money was priceless it was like a mastercard advert
btw noted today the ARSENAL TRUST OWN 13% OF THEIR CLUB a lesson to all the so called “big” clubs up here
13%? they’d be better off spending their money on something worthwhile. The key figure is 51%, especially given the nature of how Arsenal is constituted. But I take your point.
Given that Aresenal shares cost Umpteen stupid thousand each, 13% is an unbelievable figure. They got some members with deep pockets.
The thing is about this that as with boards of directors I’d reckon the calibre of trusts and fans will vary greatly from club to club.
Sonstrust is of course one of the better ones.
On the Rangers thing if ever fan ownership was going to work, it’d be there. I wonder how readily the Ibrox faithful would part with their bawbees though. Celtic always seem to have more success in getting money out of their fans.
You make a good point there Rab. The people factor is always gonna tip things one way or the other.
Democracy though is the key – embrace the community co-operative model and we have a strong, very strong foundation for sustainability.
Once that’s established we’ll get somewhere and stop all the ‘crisis’ that crop up from time to time with the same single theme – financial mismanagement.
Change is inevitable, time is the enemy. Short-termism drives clubs to ruin but I’m confident that with the talent at the disposal of DFC things will continue to improve.