Please forgive me; but I remember reading somewhere sometime ago that Barcelona is a members owned club (that's why they fo have members elected club presidents). Is this model not feasible in the case of NUFC? Can't we buy out the current owner? I appreciate economic difficulties and all that, but we don't face similar financial conditions. So, is it a far-fetched idea if a fans' owned company structured in such a way that the par value per share is so low to ensure that even the willing lowest income earner could afford buying a share or two and is established to buy out MA?
If MA get the slightest whiff that the fans were looking to buy the club he would instantly double his asking price just to spite us! He is that much of a ****bag!!
And once we are relegated those 20000 people would then need to find 2000 more each! After that seasons those 20000 people would need to find another few thousand each. Rinse and repeat for evermore. Or find one person with £3000 to give to a scouser to bump MA off.
How does the model actually work. A group could raise a certain amount of millions, but how would they sustain the financial losses or cashflow of a football club without constantly having to raise funds?
You would have management in place who would have to go to lenders if losses were made. I don't think that's any different to a normal business to be honest. The trick is to not lose money.
Same way as any other business surely. Other than some of the clubs owned by gazillionaires as a play thing most have to balance the books the same as anyone. You would just need to appoint some very smart people to run the club properly. I can imagine any return on investment would be very difficult however. You'd have to get a huge amount of fans who want to do it for the love.
One scenario could be a fans' members club owning 40% and unearthing, say, 3 investors at 20% each. The members club would elect 2 representatives, one on a 2 year basis and a second for a single year. The 6-man board would comprise 6: 2 elected members, the 3 investors and an official chief executive. I have no idea of it's possible to find 50,000 United fans to invest £3,000 each, but that's the figure we're be talking about, as well as 3 investors with £100 million each to burn.
Agreed - its an interesting concept but would be very difficult to get going from scratch. The type of investor who has multi-millions does not want loads of investors with small amounts of money involved. They tend to go for high risk - high reward. I think we need to hold out for a hero (and a bloody rich one at that).
