Fans Buyout Feasibility

[Bing Cosby]

3 minutes ago, dykwim said:

George Hirst 

 

He's not old enough to lead the line

 

FFS

[Bing Cosby]

Just now, Andysowls said:

 

[dykwim]

1 minute ago, Bing Cosby said:

 

Is that Nuhiu? 

[Bing Cosby]

4 minutes ago, dykwim said:

Is that Nuhiu? 

 

It is HIS trusty steed

[fpowl]

Got to be Ozzie owl surely 

[Andysowls]

17 minutes ago, dykwim said:

Is that Nuhiu? 

L£&@?pool ‘keeper Alisson under Megson’s hand

[CircleSeven]

1 hour ago, Grandad said:

I'll wait to see if the new manager mentions me in his press conference 

He’s bound to!

[Utah Owl]

Back in 2010 when it was feasible, we were labelled as deluded for entertaining such fanciful notions. The price has now realistically risen tenfold and there is absolutely no chance of this happening short of the Government stepping in.

[Harrysgame]

6 hours ago, S72 Owl said:

You'd struggle to get even 1,000 never mind the 300,000 fans you’d probably need. 
 

Then I don’t think you’ve calculated how much money you’d need to build the promotion squad your talking about.

 

Nice idea though. 

Not a bad idea, and could see a never going for it. As others have said its the ongoing liability and costs to run a club properly. Other than cash flow the issues around who actually runs the club would be a nightmare with several thousands wanting their say...bad enough on this site with opinions. Can you imagine if they had put a few thousand in.

 

She but we need a single buyout or Dc finds a way to run the club in a consistent and planned manner.

[Manwë]

5 hours ago, mkowl said:

 

There was never a realistic chance of getting 20000 to part with £100

But fans have put in £100 more in terms of season ticket prices, for which they get no say in the matter.

 

[Manwë]

16 minutes ago, Harrysgame said:

who actually runs the club would be a nightmare with several thousands wanting their say...bad enough on this site with opinions. Can you imagine if they had put a few thousand in.

Have you ever owned shares directly in a company? 

 

It's really easy.  Each year, the board seek permission to carry on in place.  If the shareholders think they're doing ok, they'll vote them in.

 

Another myth of fan ownership is 20000 arguing at 14:45 whether the team should play 442 or 433, and whether Thingy should start, and who should come on to replace injured players. It's a straw man argument.

 

Fans appoint the board, the board run the club, the manager picks the side.

[Manwë]

4 hours ago, owls-swfc said:

Who pays the players their weekly wages after the buyout? 

When you go to Asda, and see people stacking shelves and working tills, where do you think they get paid from?

 

- chairman of Asda

- shareholders of Asda

- Asda accounts?

 

Players would get their wages paid by Sheffield Wednesday, as they do now.

[Spondon Owl]

7 hours ago, @owlstalk said:

 

 

Big time

We all want Chansiri to succeed

But he's blaming everything  and everyone  else, won't change his advisors and won't change his strategy or philosophy

 

 

Not sure you second line is correct. 

 

And what does good look like.. what would you have him change about his strategy? 

[Manwë]

4 hours ago, Spookone said:

How does the club then run going forward? Where does that funding come from? We would end up in League 2 just before going out of business.

The OP has put together the costing of the maximum we can spend within FFP.  Chansiri could want to spend £500m, but he can't because the rules are clear.

 

And no business with 25000 weekly customers is going out of business, unless it's run incompetently.

 

Wednesday would have to have a clear strategy, to operate sustainably, and to stick within a budget.   

 

Wednesday wouldn't have to follow the lead of Chansiri in his madness and incompetence with money.

[Chris_B_SWFC]

I’m planning to win EuroMillions in 2021 so don’t worry, we’ll be ok. 
 

(I know next to nothing about football, good luck)

 

[Manwë]

7 hours ago, LondonOwl313 said:

After hearing Mr Chansiri say that the fans should buy him out if they're not happy with how he's running the club, I was trying to come up with some numbers to see whether this is even a possibility.

 

Firstly, we'd have to make him an offer for the club. Being realistic, its worth about what he paid for it (i.e. £35m). And we'd also need him to give us the stadium back included within that. Getting him to agree to selling for that and writing off his losses is probably the biggest sticking point in the whole plan.

 

But say if he did agree to that, how much more would we need. Obviously we'd need more than that because the club loses money so with no wealthy benefactor we'd need capital to absorb the losses. Unfortunately thats just the business model outside the premier league with the pot of gold on promotion the incentive for anyone to invest.

 

So lets assume that we'd need to fund the maximum allowable loss under FFP of £13m a season, and do this for 3 years to 1. give us the opportunity to build towards promotion and 2. because FFP is a rolling 3 year thing anyway.

 

So already we're talking a total of £35m + £13m x 3 = £74m to do this (lets call it £75m to make the maths easier).

 

The easiest way would be to divide that in to equal shares, but being realistic if you start asking most fans for £1,000 or even £500 they're probably going to say no because personal finances at the moment just dictate that its too much money. So lets say 1 share would be £250, which I think you could convince some casuals to part with as an investment.

 

So £75m divided by £250 is 300,000 shares. The plan would be that we either achieve promotion and sell the club for a profit in excess of the £75m at the end of the 3 years, money which would be returned to the investors... or we fail to go up and we sell the club on to someone else to have a go for £35m, and investors lose about half of their investment in the process (£125 loss). Either way, the long term strategy wouldn't be to be fan owned because the ongoing losses make it unfeasible.

 

Obviously the prospect of finding 300,000 individuals to do this is a non starter. But would it be possible to get 50,000 or even 100,000 individuals to do it, with wealthier fans buying more than one share to get us to the required 300,000. I think thats much more realistic. For a start I think most season ticket holders could be convinced... and then many more people would if theres a carrot available of a bigger pay off if promotion is achieved with their personal losses capped at £125.

 

I don't think this is as far fetched as you think, would just take some organising and probably some wealthy fans committing 5 and 6 figure sums to get the numbers up. Thoughts?

Don't be too disheartened by the response.  There's a genuine hatred for fans having any say in football clubs which I've never really understood, and secondly there's an assumption that we'd have to spend like Chansiri to stay up/progress, which is rounduns.   

 

You've thought it through, but you can see from the response that it's just impractical because fans don't want fans owning Wednesday, which probably means there aren't enough.

 

Relegation zone, no stadium, staff payment issues, still no accounts but instead of fixing it, we are waiting for the next sucker who can't point to Sheffield on the map to bail us out and spend spend spend.

 

Why run Wednesday like a business when you can lurch from disaster to crisis to implosion week after week.  

[theowlsman]

Six pages on a fans buyout? Really?

 

I think you should listen to Steelowl maybe?

 

Actually, on that score, has anyone heard from Tim recently? I’m starting to get worried about the old bugger.

[Guest Mcguigan]

£8m per year TV money and PL solidarity payments, that’s guaranteed.

£7m commercial and retail income, assuming we could find someone to match what DC puts in now.

£9m match day income, assuming we keep the same ticket prices and 24k average crowds hold up.

 

So £24m income, assuming we’re knock for knock with what we get now.

 

It probably takes £500k-£600k a month just the run the club, so £6m gone of the £24m.
 

That leaves us with a wages budget of £18m, which is around the bottom 5/6 in the Championship currently and no money for transfers.

 

Forget the £39m rolling losses for P&S because it’s far more complicated than just losing £13m a season.

 

The first season we post £13m losses the EFL will want assurances that we can get our house in order and request a forecast for the next two seasons. If we then inform them that we’re likely to post £13m again next season, we’ll be under soft sanctions. If we continue that into year 3, full on embargo will be imposed and possible points deduction.

 

Back in the same boat as know but with 100,000 fans significantly worse off for the pleasure.

 

We’d need to be consistently either buying or developing players and selling at the right price to stay in existence and that will take years to happen.

[Harrysgame]

8 hours ago, Manwë said:

Have you ever owned shares directly in a company? 

 

It's really easy.  Each year, the board seek permission to carry on in place.  If the shareholders think they're doing ok, they'll vote them in.

 

Another myth of fan ownership is 20000 arguing at 14:45 whether the team should play 442 or 433, and whether Thingy should start, and who should come on to replace injured players. It's a straw man argument.

 

Fans appoint the board, the board run the club, the manager picks the side.

Slightly condescending there pal. I am well aware how a plc and shareholding work.  I have shares in several businesses and if appropriate would take a punt on our club.

The difference is with football you tend to let your heart rule your head and  people get more passionate about a club than a business as shareholders. 

I could imagine their would be constant calls for change in the executive board every week because some didn't like a decision etc. Understandable because football is about passion.

[Gob_Bluth]

8 hours ago, Chris_B_SWFC said:

I’m planning to win EuroMillions in 2021 so don’t worry, we’ll be ok. 
 

(I know next to nothing about football, good luck)

 

 

I'm not sure the £2.10 winnings will cover it