Fan buy-out schemes make a comeback.
Posted on October 4th, 2009 | 8 Comments |
The Newcastle United Supporters Trust is launching on Wednesday 7th October at the Newcastle Civic Centre and it claims to have £20m in pledges with which it hopes to buy a stake in the club.
The NUST is also backing the ‘Yes We Can’ campaign, which has the support of City financial institutions and has used new pensions legislation to entice 483 x £20,000 of investment (nearly £10m) and has a further 202 members committed to signing up.
Neil Mitchell, Chair of NUST, said:
“Realistically, we’re looking to buy a stake in the club, though we don’t think buying it outright is unrealistic in the long term. With the takeovers at an impasse, we’re looking to raise funds to help a new buyer. We want to give supporters a voice, something they’ve not had in the past.”
The NUST is using the Keegan tribunal’s revelations that the club lied to the fans as a hook to drum up new enthusiasm for these fan buy-out schemes and Mitchell added:
“The fact that the fans have been lied to is a damning indictment of the way the club’s been run over the last couple of years.”
The NUST’s mission statement claims its main aims are:
- To strengthen the bonds and dialogue between Newcastle United and its supporters;
- To encourage Newcastle United to take proper account of the interests of its supporters and the community it serves in its decisions and to honour the contribution made to the club by the community;
- Ultimately, to promote the full, accountable democratic and constructive involvement of supporters in the running and direction of Newcastle United including the principle of supporter representation on the board of Newcastle United.
And it claims the Trust will ‘act responsibly as the guardian of the future of Newcastle United‘.
In principle these sorts of schemes aren’t a bad idea and they do work successfully with some continental clubs. The practicalities of such schemes can cause difficulties though and it remains to be seen if the NUST has the wherewithal to drive something like this through and whether or not a new owner will look upon fan ownership favourably.
Interesting – but I think they have a lot of work ahead of them. The key will be the level of interest from the NUFC fanbase and whether this is sufficient to support the aims of the project.
Not the best of times to be starting an initiative of this type, given the recession but I wish them luck.
Personally, I won’t be selling my villa in the south of france and handing over the dosh to these people at this stage :)