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A very Interesting read

 

GREGOR ROBERTSON
august 12 2019, 12:01am, the times
Revealed: how Stevenage became the lower-league club who made a profit
gregor robertson

The Journeyman visits . . . Stevenage


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As another season swings into life, is there not something rather obscene about Premier League clubs spending £1.4 billion on summer transfers, as clubs in the Football League are fighting for survival more than ever?

Bury are on the brink. Bolton Wanderers have been reduced to a shell of a club. Fifty-two of the 72 Football League clubs ended 2017-18 in the red. Wages and losses are rising at a rate that is far outpacing income. Phil Wallace, owner of the League Two club Stevenage, makes a stark assessment. “If something doesn’t happen soon, then many of these lower-league clubs will not exist one day,” he says.

Wallace is well placed to make that judgment. Stevenage have been transformed since the chief executive of the Lamex Food Group bought the Hertfordshire club two decades ago.

They were promoted to the EFL for the first time in 2010 and followed that by going up, under Graham Westley, their former manager, to League One, in 2011.

In 2012, they reached the League One play-off semi-finals and, despite dropping back down to League Two in 2014, Stevenage have established themselves as a fixture of the Football League over the past decade.

Yet running a football club sustainably, Wallace says, is a “constant battle”. Stevenage were one of only eight League Two clubs to turn a small profit in 2017-18, thanks largely to the sale of Ben Wilmot, the academy-developed defender, to Watford. Yet Stevenage “probably lose money three years out of four”, according to the owner.

As with most clubs, Wallace says, Stevenage have pretty much exhausted all available income streams. “All of us are out in our communities, in local schools, giving free tickets away, doing everything we can to drive attendances to our community clubs — and we can’t put ticket prices up to increase our income,” he says. “Then, if you accept that we’re probably not going to be able to depress wages for staff and players, then that future looks quite bleak, doesn’t it?”

Stevenage, moreover, have not been afraid to think outside the box. This summer, they sold more than £300,000 of club shares through Tifosy, the sports investment platform co-founded by Gianluca Vialli, the former Chelsea and Italy striker, to invest directly into the first-team playing budget. Shareholders enjoy voting rights, would receive a 25 per cent dividend upon promotion to League One, and a further 75 per cent dividend should they get into the Championship.

“Over 150 people are now part-owners of the football club who have the ability to share in our success,” Wallace says. “It wasn’t an exercise in me divesting myself of the club; it was an exercise to bring money in that we could use to directly improve the football budget, and to reward those [investors] if we were successful.”

In 2017, Stevenage became the first club in English football to offer a bond, also using Tifosy, to fund the development of a new stand at the Lamex Stadium. More than 200 fans raised £600,000, investing between £500 and £25,000. The 1,500-seat North Stand opens next month.

Having missed out on the League Two play-offs by one point last season with a playing budget of £1.6 million, slightly below the £1.8 million League Two average, 12 new players have arrived this summer along with Mark Sampson, the former England women’s head coach, and David Oldfield, a former Leicester City midfielder, as assistants to Dino Maamria, the manager.

Kurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeatKurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeat
DAVID SIMPSON/TGS PHOTO/REX
However, Wallace says the status quo is unsustainable. “There’s a huge groundswell of opinion to see money filter down more, and that’s coming from a realisation that you can’t just have top-level football in this country,” he says. “Football is the national game and it has to be played at all levels to be the national game.

“This is not League One and League Two clubs looking for a handout. The majority of clubs are run well by good people who know what they’re doing. I know what I’m doing: I run a £1.6 billion-turnover business. But I can’t make this club break even.

“I can cut my wage bill and then take Stevenage out of the Football League. You could look at wage caps but I’m not really in favour of suppressing people’s wages — people should be allowed to earn what they can — and I can’t make supporters pay more. We are fighting an uphill battle. In years to come, we are going to ask ourselves, ‘What didn’t we actually understand was wrong about that scenario? How did we think this was sustainable?’ ”

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After a lot of consideration about this thread, I think that there may well be some mileage in fans coming together as an informal group who are not constrained like the Trust. 

 

I understand that the Trust are meeting this evening and I wish them well - I would love to see a proactive approach to try and elicit a change of behaviour from the owner and his  brother that would save the club from the untold damage that the current behaviour is creating.

 

My idea is that we act as something akin to a pressure group, no attempt to divide us will work because we would act as a group for the good of the Oldham Athletic support base. I feel that if 500 (maybe 1000) or so like minded, completely cheesed off, disillusioned supporters of OAFC pledge to attend games at BP only if certain conditions are made such as some of or all of :-

 

(a) The owner/ Landlord and FLG or whoever resolve the current issues that blighted the North Stand and others on Saturday and that a compromise arrangement is agreed by all parties

 

(b) That the owner ensures that all supporters of Oldham Athletic are not subject to unfair treatment in respect of which part of the stadium they choose to sit in

 

(c) The club will make clear its management structure on and off-the-field and articulate exactly what role the owner/ Sporting Director/ Barry Owen/ Banide etc etc play in the recruitment, selection and coaching of the players

 

(d) All club employees and creditors will be paid promptly and in full in accordance with EFL terms

 

(e) The owners and commercial Director will provide fans with an update of how they seek to attract commercial income into the club and supplement the existing funding streams available to OAFC.

 

  I envisage that this group would work with the Trust and the Club if mutually beneficial and be a positive as well as potentially negative force. Obviously within our powers is the potential to withdraw our support / boycott games etc.

 

We are all still OAFC supporters whether we attend or not / we are only a group that has come together to act as a catalyst for change - any thoughts?? 

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1 hour ago, Clifford said:

Prem sides can operate off TV money alone. They could let people in for free. 

 

Apart from Manchester United that is.

Season 2018/2019 Man Utd were paid £142.5 million in tv revenues. They had a wage bill of £170 million for the first team squad alone. Then there are the salaries for the academy/ U21 players plus managerial and coaching staff not forgetting the administrative side of the club.

 

And they pull in an average £2 million a home game from ‘bums on seats’... money they need to pay the inflated salaries of their underperforming superstars. Don’t you just love ‘em... 🤬

 

 

 

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Clifford said:

If AL is managing to make some money, by whatever means, from OAFC he will remain. We have seen this with other owners at other clubs. Give them abuse, they stop going but still earn.


The only way to get an owner out is to hit them in the pocket.


Stop giving them your money. Support the FLG (when the time comes) and get rid of this clown. 

I thought the FLG wanted to give them. money

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33 minutes ago, Steve_R said:

I thought the FLG wanted to give them. money

 

I dont believe the idea is to give it him to spend on whatever he wants. I doubt they'll pay the laundry bill or flights or the sporting directors wages. I'd imagine it'll be investment on the field. 

 

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12 minutes ago, Clifford said:

 

I dont believe the idea is to give it him to spend on whatever he wants. I doubt they'll pay the laundry bill or flights or the sporting directors wages. I'd imagine it'll be investment on the field. 

 

 

Laundry bills need paying too.   It's not either or.

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4 minutes ago, Dave_Og said:

 

Laundry bills need paying too.   It's not either or.

 

So you would give your profits without any say on where it was spent having spent millions buying the stand? Jesus. Playershare was specific and I'd expect this fund to be.

 

lets face it the Lemon brothers aren't going to be here long enough to reap the benefits, laundry or no laundry.

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2 hours ago, OLDHAMADE said:

A very Interesting read

 

GREGOR ROBERTSON
august 12 2019, 12:01am, the times
Revealed: how Stevenage became the lower-league club who made a profit
gregor robertson

The Journeyman visits . . . Stevenage


Share
Save
As another season swings into life, is there not something rather obscene about Premier League clubs spending £1.4 billion on summer transfers, as clubs in the Football League are fighting for survival more than ever?

Bury are on the brink. Bolton Wanderers have been reduced to a shell of a club. Fifty-two of the 72 Football League clubs ended 2017-18 in the red. Wages and losses are rising at a rate that is far outpacing income. Phil Wallace, owner of the League Two club Stevenage, makes a stark assessment. “If something doesn’t happen soon, then many of these lower-league clubs will not exist one day,” he says.

Wallace is well placed to make that judgment. Stevenage have been transformed since the chief executive of the Lamex Food Group bought the Hertfordshire club two decades ago.

They were promoted to the EFL for the first time in 2010 and followed that by going up, under Graham Westley, their former manager, to League One, in 2011.

In 2012, they reached the League One play-off semi-finals and, despite dropping back down to League Two in 2014, Stevenage have established themselves as a fixture of the Football League over the past decade.

Yet running a football club sustainably, Wallace says, is a “constant battle”. Stevenage were one of only eight League Two clubs to turn a small profit in 2017-18, thanks largely to the sale of Ben Wilmot, the academy-developed defender, to Watford. Yet Stevenage “probably lose money three years out of four”, according to the owner.

As with most clubs, Wallace says, Stevenage have pretty much exhausted all available income streams. “All of us are out in our communities, in local schools, giving free tickets away, doing everything we can to drive attendances to our community clubs — and we can’t put ticket prices up to increase our income,” he says. “Then, if you accept that we’re probably not going to be able to depress wages for staff and players, then that future looks quite bleak, doesn’t it?”

Stevenage, moreover, have not been afraid to think outside the box. This summer, they sold more than £300,000 of club shares through Tifosy, the sports investment platform co-founded by Gianluca Vialli, the former Chelsea and Italy striker, to invest directly into the first-team playing budget. Shareholders enjoy voting rights, would receive a 25 per cent dividend upon promotion to League One, and a further 75 per cent dividend should they get into the Championship.

“Over 150 people are now part-owners of the football club who have the ability to share in our success,” Wallace says. “It wasn’t an exercise in me divesting myself of the club; it was an exercise to bring money in that we could use to directly improve the football budget, and to reward those [investors] if we were successful.”

In 2017, Stevenage became the first club in English football to offer a bond, also using Tifosy, to fund the development of a new stand at the Lamex Stadium. More than 200 fans raised £600,000, investing between £500 and £25,000. The 1,500-seat North Stand opens next month.

Having missed out on the League Two play-offs by one point last season with a playing budget of £1.6 million, slightly below the £1.8 million League Two average, 12 new players have arrived this summer along with Mark Sampson, the former England women’s head coach, and David Oldfield, a former Leicester City midfielder, as assistants to Dino Maamria, the manager.

Kurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeatKurtis Guthrie, of Stevenage, finds himself outnumbered as Exeter condemned the Hertfordshire club to a second straight league defeat
DAVID SIMPSON/TGS PHOTO/REX
However, Wallace says the status quo is unsustainable. “There’s a huge groundswell of opinion to see money filter down more, and that’s coming from a realisation that you can’t just have top-level football in this country,” he says. “Football is the national game and it has to be played at all levels to be the national game.

“This is not League One and League Two clubs looking for a handout. The majority of clubs are run well by good people who know what they’re doing. I know what I’m doing: I run a £1.6 billion-turnover business. But I can’t make this club break even.

“I can cut my wage bill and then take Stevenage out of the Football League. You could look at wage caps but I’m not really in favour of suppressing people’s wages — people should be allowed to earn what they can — and I can’t make supporters pay more. We are fighting an uphill battle. In years to come, we are going to ask ourselves, ‘What didn’t we actually understand was wrong about that scenario? How did we think this was sustainable?’ ”

How rich are their fans? We saved about 10k didn't we for a score board?

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2 hours ago, unsworth blue said:

After a lot of consideration about this thread, I think that there may well be some mileage in fans coming together as an informal group who are not constrained like the Trust. 

 

I understand that the Trust are meeting this evening and I wish them well - I would love to see a proactive approach to try and elicit a change of behaviour from the owner and his  brother that would save the club from the untold damage that the current behaviour is creating.

 

My idea is that we act as something akin to a pressure group, no attempt to divide us will work because we would act as a group for the good of the Oldham Athletic support base. I feel that if 500 (maybe 1000) or so like minded, completely cheesed off, disillusioned supporters of OAFC pledge to attend games at BP only if certain conditions are made such as some of or all of :-

 

(a) The owner/ Landlord and FLG or whoever resolve the current issues that blighted the North Stand and others on Saturday and that a compromise arrangement is agreed by all parties

 

(b) That the owner ensures that all supporters of Oldham Athletic are not subject to unfair treatment in respect of which part of the stadium they choose to sit in

 

(c) The club will make clear its management structure on and off-the-field and articulate exactly what role the owner/ Sporting Director/ Barry Owen/ Banide etc etc play in the recruitment, selection and coaching of the players

 

(d) All club employees and creditors will be paid promptly and in full in accordance with EFL terms

 

(e) The owners and commercial Director will provide fans with an update of how they seek to attract commercial income into the club and supplement the existing funding streams available to OAFC.

 

  I envisage that this group would work with the Trust and the Club if mutually beneficial and be a positive as well as potentially negative force. Obviously within our powers is the potential to withdraw our support / boycott games etc.

 

We are all still OAFC supporters whether we attend or not / we are only a group that has come together to act as a catalyst for change - any thoughts?? 

5 succinct points.

Well worth consideration and discussion.

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50 minutes ago, Clifford said:

 

So you would give your profits without any say on where it was spent having spent millions buying the stand? Jesus. Playershare was specific and I'd expect this fund to be.

 

lets face it the Lemon brothers aren't going to be here long enough to reap the benefits, laundry or no laundry.

You think he'd accept being told what to do???!!!

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1 hour ago, Clifford said:

 

So you would give your profits without any say on where it was spent having spent millions buying the stand? Jesus. Playershare was specific and I'd expect this fund to be.

 

lets face it the Lemon brothers aren't going to be here long enough to reap the benefits, laundry or no laundry.

If the club pay rent it’s their profits to spend on what they want. 

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2 hours ago, Clifford said:

I  dont believe the idea is to give it him to spend on whatever he wants. I doubt they'll pay the laundry bill or flights or the sporting directors wages. I'd imagine it'll be investment on the field.

 

Giving money for investment on the field just means AL would be saving money on players so he could keep a bit more in his bank +  pay the bills,! 

Giving the club money is giving the club money, even if  it's ring fenced for players it still goes into the OAFC pot..

 

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