The Takeover Thread - Recon Group - NOW WITH NEW POLL

[dave.woodhall]

Wasn't it their training ground?

So it was, and for a lot more than £200 million. http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a050801RealSellTraining

[Villa in Denmark]

Wasn't it their training ground?

So it was, and for a lot more than £200 million. http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a050801RealSellTraining

And even allowing for that the last figures I can find (2013/14) say that they owe the banks over 600M euros.

[aj2k77]

Real Madrid also had special tax arrangements and we're given land when the local council owed them money in the early 90's. The debt to them was grossly exaggerated, therefore the land they received was worth a lot more money than the real debt to them.

Never liked the club.

[Villa in Denmark]

All of that patronage can be traced back at least as far as Franco when they were to him what Chelsea is to Abramovich and Man City to the Mansours. An ego trip / fig leaf of respectability by association.

[tomd2103]

Do you think that you could get 10,000 people to cough up £5,000.00 each.
If you could raise £50,million you might be able to do something.
If you can not, then forget it.

I too can't really see it being an option, but surely there would be people out there willing to buy more than £5,000 worth?

[peter w]

Just one thing about Real Madrid's fan ownership (and Barcelona's for that matter), they might be owned by the fans in name, but they're actually owned by the 3 biggest banks in Spain as their combined debt is in the region of 1 Billion Euros.  When the Spanish banks got into trouble in 2008 both clubs shat bricks that the debt would at least be partially called in.  Instead the Spanish government came to the rescue whilst implementing an austerity package that makes the UK's look like Brewster's Millions.

So next time someone is cheering on Ronaldo or Messi or whoever, just think how many people got thrown on the scrapheap to keep their clubs solvent enough to continue to pay their £200,000 per week wages.

I may be wrong, but I read that some years ago when Real owed the best part of £250 millon and that size of debt back then was starting to worry even their bankers, King Juan Carlos said something to the effect that his club would not be allowed to go out of business, they suddenly found they owned a piece of land they'd forgotten about and to everyone's surprise the Spanish government realised they just HAD to have it. It was independently valued at £200 million. 

Wasn't it their training ground. I may be wrong but didn't they then give it back to the club? Or were they able to find some land to build a new training ground on?

[Villa in Denmark]

Do you think that you could get 10,000 people to cough up £5,000.00 each.
If you could raise £50,million you might be able to do something.
If you can not, then forget it.

I too can't really see it being an option, but surely there would be people out there willing to buy more than £5,000 worth?

I'd guess that there's fewer that would stump up more than £5K than those who wouldn't / couldn't stump £50-100.  At any rate, not enough to bring the average back up.

Even then you're talking about raising £50M, which even if you got Lerner to sell for that and write off any outstanding debt, you've still got the problem of running the club on a what goes out can never exceed what comes in principle, unless the board (who must be appointed by the shareholders) decide that they can justify borrowings against future earnings, with the possibility that if it all goes tits up (don't look like getting promoted) the shareholders could call an EGM and sack the board then start looking for a new board.

Given that modern life is short termisim personified and football has always been life amplified in terms of aspiration, you'd need balls of steel and a heart of ice to take a board position under those conditions in a club that's in turmoil and owned by a fanbase that's split along the various stages of grief, but all rallying around anger as the common theme.

[peter w]

Wasn't it their training ground?

So it was, and for a lot more than £200 million. http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a050801RealSellTraining

Ah

[Billy Walker]

The only way you would get enough fans to pony up the necessary cash would be to get a finance package in place and convince people they would get some benefit from ownership.

For example , a loan of £5,000 over 5 years at 4.5% (I got the rate from Nationwide) would cost you £93 a month.
Lets say ownership gives you 20% off a season ticket thats a £100 benefit per year.
If you default on the loan, the bank gets your shares.

People need to be reassured that they are buying an ASSET not just throwing their money away. People wouldnt baulk at the loan above for a house extension, a car , a holiday or a new kitchen. Why do they see that as ok but not on their (probably) main interest in life , their passion ?

It would need a finance arrangement with a bank of some kind, although Randy might be useful there with his finance connections.

I'm sure there would be some richer people who might pony up a few thousand but to be genuinely fan-owned you would have to have something like the above, it is the way the world works these days. I think its a shame that to many people they are prepared to spend say over a thousand pounds a year watching Villa with their families, but the idea of actually owning part of it, of electing a board to responsibly run the club seems too much.

There are genuine questions to be answered as to how the day to day expenditure would be financed, and I respect those who have been here before and seen the idea fall at the first hurdle when people are asked to pay, but to me, if this forum is for anything then surely it should constructively discuss a change which would end the abuse of OUR great institution at the hands of the inept, disinterested or egotisitical current and previous owners.

That's a great post and you've expressed ideas here that I was thinking about but couldn't quite articulate.   

[SashasGrandad]

Do you think that you could get 10,000 people to cough up £5,000.00 each.
If you could raise £50,million you might be able to do something.
If you can not, then forget it.

I would only need to find another 9,999.

And I'm sure an ex Governor of the Bank of England could find quite a few of those.

[DB]

Just one thing about Real Madrid's fan ownership (and Barcelona's for that matter), they might be owned by the fans in name, but they're actually owned by the 3 biggest banks in Spain as their combined debt is in the region of 1 Billion Euros.  When the Spanish banks got into trouble in 2008 both clubs shat bricks that the debt would at least be partially called in.  Instead the Spanish government came to the rescue whilst implementing an austerity package that makes the UK's look like Brewster's Millions.

So next time someone is cheering on Ronaldo or Messi or whoever, just think how many people got thrown on the scrapheap to keep their clubs solvent enough to continue to pay their £200,000 per week wages.

I may be wrong, but I read that some years ago when Real owed the best part of £250 millon and that size of debt back then was starting to worry even their bankers, King Juan Carlos said something to the effect that his club would not be allowed to go out of business, they suddenly found they owned a piece of land they'd forgotten about and to everyone's surprise the Spanish government realised they just HAD to have it. It was independently valued at £200 million. 

Wasn't it their training ground. I may be wrong but didn't they then give it back to the club? Or were they able to find some land to build a new training ground on?

They had a new training ground. The old one they sold now has 4 skyscrapers sitting on it. I think it was the Madrid government who paid over the odds for it, as Dave said under instruction not to let them go out of business.

[Holte L2]

The only way you would get enough fans to pony up the necessary cash would be to get a finance package in place and convince people they would get some benefit from ownership.

For example , a loan of £5,000 over 5 years at 4.5% (I got the rate from Nationwide) would cost you £93 a month.
Lets say ownership gives you 20% off a season ticket thats a £100 benefit per year.
If you default on the loan, the bank gets your shares.

People need to be reassured that they are buying an ASSET not just throwing their money away. People wouldnt baulk at the loan above for a house extension, a car , a holiday or a new kitchen. Why do they see that as ok but not on their (probably) main interest in life , their passion ?

It would need a finance arrangement with a bank of some kind, although Randy might be useful there with his finance connections.

I'm sure there would be some richer people who might pony up a few thousand but to be genuinely fan-owned you would have to have something like the above, it is the way the world works these days. I think its a shame that to many people they are prepared to spend say over a thousand pounds a year watching Villa with their families, but the idea of actually owning part of it, of electing a board to responsibly run the club seems too much.

There are genuine questions to be answered as to how the day to day expenditure would be financed, and I respect those who have been here before and seen the idea fall at the first hurdle when people are asked to pay, but to me, if this forum is for anything then surely it should constructively discuss a change which would end the abuse of OUR great institution at the hands of the inept, disinterested or egotisitical current and previous owners.

That's a great post and you've expressed ideas here that I was thinking about but couldn't quite articulate.   

The sticking point is Lerner.  He needs to lower his asking price from £150m for anything to ever happen.

[tomd2103]

Do you think that you could get 10,000 people to cough up £5,000.00 each.
If you could raise £50,million you might be able to do something.
If you can not, then forget it.

I too can't really see it being an option, but surely there would be people out there willing to buy more than £5,000 worth?

I'd guess that there's fewer that would stump up more than £5K than those who wouldn't / couldn't stump £50-100.  At any rate, not enough to bring the average back up.

Even then you're talking about raising £50M, which even if you got Lerner to sell for that and write off any outstanding debt, you've still got the problem of running the club on a what goes out can never exceed what comes in principle, unless the board (who must be appointed by the shareholders) decide that they can justify borrowings against future earnings, with the possibility that if it all goes tits up (don't look like getting promoted) the shareholders could call an EGM and sack the board then start looking for a new board.

Given that modern life is short termisim personified and football has always been life amplified in terms of aspiration, you'd need balls of steel and a heart of ice to take a board position under those conditions in a club that's in turmoil and owned by a fanbase that's split along the various stages of grief, but all rallying around anger as the common theme.

Very unlikely then unless we went tumbling down the leagues and Lerner both lowered the asking price significantly and agreed to write off a massive amount of debt?

[pbavfckuwait]

This is the position he is finding himself in thou, his value of his asset is depreciating all the time, no one knows what he would accept or to what kind of seller.
People who know more about business than me maybe able to answer, what if he took a reduced initial sale price, would it be possible for a amount based on what division we are in, he was paid annually, i.e. Prem 10 mill, Championship 5 mill and so on and so on, for an agreed amount of years, he is a trust fund rich kid, surely this is some form of guaranteed income as is his trust fund. As I say may not be at all possible, but better business minds than mine (not hard)may be able to clarify.

[cdbearsfan]

I suspect the uncertainty over whether the Champions League will become a closed shop is going to make us even less attractive to investors... or at least to the dream investor who spunks money into the club in the hope of doing a Man City.

If we do get a new owner they'll probably be uninspiring.