Foundation of Hearts/Budge/Fan Ownership

[Carheenlea]

Be interesting to read this tomorrow, and ultimately, where it leaves those who put their money in expecting fan ownership down the line.

[Lago]

Wonder if the same will apply to HSL ?

[James Stephen]

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Be interesting to read this tomorrow, and ultimately, where it leaves those who put their money in expecting fan ownership down the line.

She is right of course.

I mean they might make a 1 year, £12m stand cost £18m, take two years (and counting) and do something really stupid like put the press box in the wrong position and forget to order seats.

Much better to leave it to the professionals...

[greenginger]

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Wonder if the same will apply to HSL ?

HSL hope to get 25 % of the shares , they will never be in a position to run the show.

FoH on the other hand will own 75.1 % of HOMFC and Budge is telling them she will continue to call the shots. That can only happen with the support of the FoH board, and they can be replaced if that is not agreed by the majority of FoH members.

[Danderhall Hibs]

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She is right of course.

I mean they might make a 1 year, £12m stand cost £18m, take two years (and counting) and do something really stupid like put the press box in the wrong position and forget to order seats.

Much better to leave it to the professionals...

In all seriousness though she’s right - look at the polarised arguments on here and try and apply that to the boardroom. Nothing would get done.

Enjoyed your book BTW

[Since452]

No fans will ever run any club. Doesn't matter how much monthly direct debits there are or how many fans reps there are on the board.

[RyeSloan]

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No fans will ever run any club. Doesn't matter how much monthly direct debits there are or how many fans reps there are on the board.

Yup. There is a difference from running a club to owing a club.

Do Barca not have some sort of fan ownership / membership set up? Sure they vote in the president or the likes but he then runs the club.

[James Stephen]

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Yup. There is a difference from running a club to owing a club.

Do Barca not have some sort of fan ownership / membership set up? Sure they vote in the president or the likes but he then runs the club.

Yeah, and Real Madrid too. The two biggest clubs in the world probably.

It does contribute to the short term and sensationalist way they are run though, with aspiring presidents making elaborate promises to get elected.

I think the benign dictator model is best, as long as fans have enough of an interest to hold a blocking vote should it be required.

But that wasn't the model that FoH was sold on though was it? It's been a great effort by Hearts fans, and they would have every right to be furious with Budge if she was effectively holding court over them while spending (badly, it has to be said) their very significant amounts of cash.

[James Stephen]

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In all seriousness though she’s right - look at the polarised arguments on here and try and apply that to the boardroom. Nothing would get done.

Enjoyed your book BTW

Thanks Danderhall, glad you liked it 👍

[Pretty Boy]

She's not really saying anything shocking.

I think one of the common myths about fan ownership is that fans would be involved in everything from the price of a pie to the construction of a helipad. In reality fans own the club but, like most clubs, there is a small team who actually run the club on a day to day basis.

[cocteautwin]

I think it's just her polite way of saying she doesn't want a load of rabid idiot football fans running the show. Otherwise they might end up with a whole team of Malaury Martins and David Vanaceks.

[offshorehibby]

To be honest the same would happen here if the fans owned the club. We would still have a CEO and board running the club and making the day to day decisions.

[Famous Fiver]

My opinion all along is that she has got to play Football Manager with other folks money with 100% control.

I've never known a turkey vote for Christmas.

They'll have to carry her out screaming and kicking.

Keep giving, you Gorgie mugs!!

[cocteautwin]

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My opinion all along is that she has got to play Football Manager with other folks money with 100% control.

I've never known a turkey vote for Christmas.

They'll have to carry her out screaming and kicking.

Keep giving, you Gorgie mugs!!

She's *****ed through £18m of the fans money so far and she's still making them pay another £2.2m of a loan over the next 18 months.

[007]

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I think it's just her polite way of saying she doesn't want a load of rabid idiot football fans running the show. Otherwise they might end up with a whole team of Malaury Martins and David Vanaceks.

You could say, after getting through about 100 players, they've ended up with a team of Malaury Martins and David Vaneceks with her running the show. Maybe under fan ownership they could have got there by only getting half the amount of players.

It's hard to decide who has done a better job of wasting their FoH money, Budge with the massive overspend on the stand or Levein with the hit and miss (mostly miss) recruitment track record.

[OfficialHSL]

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To be honest the same would happen here if the fans owned the club. We would still have a CEO and board running the club and making the day to day decisions.

This is absolutely correct.

We are however missing the point here. In less than 12 months time they will be outspending our Manager by huge amounts. We already have over 2000 supporters where the penny has dropped and they realise what is happening before our eyes. However, we have many thousands more who just cannot see what is unfolding. Can we again urge our fellow supporters to join and donate. Our Management Team will not be able to perform miracles forever.


HSL

[Hibby Bairn]

Needs collective leadership to make it work at Hibs. Hearts had a crisis. Hibs don’t.

[banchoryhibs]

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She's *****ed through £18m of the fans money so far and she's still making them pay another £2.2m of a loan over the next 18 months.

Regardless of how the money has been spent / squandered / chucked down a huge hole that is an £18m stand the simple fact is that our neighbours will have put an additional £20m into their club over and above all normal revenue sources. And they most probably will continue to do so.

OfficialHSL is 100% correct - even Levein will seriously exploit that advantage, heaven help us if they get decent manager in...…

Currently our only secure way to counter their advantage is to get right behind HSL - all the money goes into our Club.

If you've not signed up please do so - even £10 per month will help!

[RoYO!]

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This is absolutely correct.

We are however missing the point here. In less than 12 months time they will be outspending our Manager by huge amounts. We already have over 2000 supporters where the penny has dropped and they realise what is happening before our eyes. However, we have many thousands more who just cannot see what is unfolding. Can we again urge our fellow supporters to join and donate. Our Management Team will not be able to perform miracles forever.


HSL

No thank you. I believe I do enough to support the team. And have done for many years. I’m happy with what I contribute to the club and don’t feel any shame in this.

[where'stheslope]

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No thank you. I believe I do enough to support the team. And have done for many years. I’m happy with what I contribute to the club and don’t feel any shame in this.

Your correct, there is no shame in not contributing, but you then can't complain if the Hertz start pulling their team together and dominating us with greater funding!
Its a win no win situation, if your happy with what your seeing and think we will continue to get better without extra money then fine?

[Carheenlea]

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No thank you. I believe I do enough to support the team. And have done for many years. I’m happy with what I contribute to the club and don’t feel any shame in this.

I’m a subscriber to HSL, but do feel that there is a danger of having fans being criticised for not doing so. Buying a ST and supporting the team should never be underestimated and for me, that should always be the main way to back the club and as an ordinary working man or woman feel you have done your bit for the club.
Extra revenue is always welcome, and for those able and comfortable to do so HSL is a great way of providing that, but it’s uo to the club also to look for investment from other wealthier sources other than fans who spend a large chunk of their disposable income on supporting Hibs. The tone of the post you quoted is one that has undertones of making fans feel guilty for not committing to HSL, and they could chase more people away than attract if they stray into that territory and paint bleak outlooks for the future without HSL.

[OfficialHSL]

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No thank you. I believe I do enough to support the team. And have done for many years. I’m happy with what I contribute to the club and don’t feel any shame in this.

For the avoidance of any doubt we are not in any way suggesting that non donators should feel any shame. We only want people to donate if they have spare cash that they won't miss. We are also trying to simply highlight what is going on off field that we believe will have an on field impact. We find that many Hibs supporters are unaware of the additional contributions that Hearts and Aberdeen fans are making and we are trying to highlight this in order to give Hibs fans an opportunity to do something should they wish. It is already a fact that both Hearts and Aberdeen are spending more money on their squads. As things stand this gap will only get bigger and bigger. It is our choice what product we want on the park.


HSL

[OfficialHSL]

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I’m a subscriber to HSL, but do feel that there is a danger of having fans being criticised for not doing so. Buying a ST and supporting the team should never be underestimated and for me, that should always be the main way to back the club and as an ordinary working man or woman feel you have done your bit for the club.
Extra revenue is always welcome, and for those able and comfortable to do so HSL is a great way of providing that, but it’s uo to the club also to look for investment from other wealthier sources other than fans who spend a large chunk of their disposable income on supporting Hibs. The tone of the post you quoted is one that has undertones of making fans feel guilty for not committing to HSL, and they could chase more people away than attract if they stray into that territory and paint bleak outlooks for the future without HSL.

Please see our latest post.

We do not intend in any way to criticise fans for not contributing to HSL. We go out of our way to point out that fans should only contribute if they have the financial means to do so. Rent/mortgage and other things in life are much more important. What we have been asked to do however is to try and highlight what is unfolding elsewhere and perhaps have a simpler, perhaps more blunt message. It is a difficult balance to strike.

HSL

[ancient hibee]

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No fans will ever run any club. Doesn't matter how much monthly direct debits there are or how many fans reps there are on the board.

In fact the majority of clubs in Scotland are run by fans.Are you trying to say that Anne Budge is not a fan?Do you think that the people who put money into clubs in the other three leagues and keep them going so that they can play in front of a man and a dog are not fans?

[DaveF]

HSL needs a reboot.

I have nothing but admiration for Jim and his few helpers as they absolutely have the right intention but they seem to up against public opinion when it comes to increasing the uptake.

The club need to drive it forward. There are people out there who have good ideas both at home and abroado but this all needs to be brought together, thrashed out and kick started.

The Base is there, it just needs to be buill upon with a new, fresh message and the club leading the way could go some way to bringing more supporters on board.

[Speedway]

There’s an argument that Hibs’ fans appetite for success has been satiated to a large degree by the SC win which we’ll now milk and refer to for the next 30 years as we did with 0-7

Sheep and yam followers seem to hold a much greater level of appetite for their clubs to become clubs who win silverware on an annual basis, than we do.

[The Spaceman]

I’m sorry, but HSL is simply not professional or official enough and needs rebooted.

The club should be directly promoting it at every single opportunity. It should be part of our snazzy season ticket campaign videos and all over our websites and matchday advertising. It should not be left down to an amateur-looking poster on hibs.net. I appreciate you guys are doing this voluntarily and out of the love for our club, so I applaud you. But far more drive needs to come from the very top of the club.

[RyeSloan]

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I’m sorry, but HSL is simply not professional or official enough and needs rebooted.

The club should be directly promoting it at every single opportunity. It should be part of our snazzy season ticket campaign videos and all over our websites and matchday advertising. It should not be left down to an amateur-looking poster on hibs.net. I appreciate you guys are doing this voluntarily and out of the love for our club, so I applaud you. But far more drive needs to come from the very top of the club.

The recent season ticket mailing had an HSL leaflet did it not?

The thing is though is that it is not, by design, the club’s scheme. So while they benefit from it there is little chance of it being prompted by the club across all of its official channels ad nauseam.

Sadly HSL seems to be a somewhat tainted proposition. Not helped of course by a few vocal misguided fans and the ponzi stuff. It got off to a bad start and despite some success has forever more seemed to rather underperform.

I’m also not always a fan of the tone of the message. Stating Hearts will forever more pull away from us because we don’t contribute seems to suggest that their scheme will grow larger and larger forever more as well. Yes it’s bigger and contributes more but is that gap forever widening and growing?

That said I’m not denigrating the effort they put in nor am I sure what else they can offer...the subscriptions literally buy some of the club so it’s way more than just a donation. So maybe it’s more of a rebrand and a massaging of the message that’s needed.

[OfficialHSL]

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The recent season ticket mailing had an HSL leaflet did it not?

The thing is though is that it is not, by design, the club’s scheme. So while they benefit from it there is little chance of it being prompted by the club across all of its official channels ad nauseam.

Sadly HSL seems to be a somewhat tainted proposition. Not helped of course by a few vocal misguided fans and the ponzi stuff. It got off to a bad start and despite some success has forever more seemed to rather underperform.

I’m also not always a fan of the tone of the message. Stating Hearts will forever more pull away from us because we don’t contribute seems to suggest that their scheme will grow larger and larger forever more as well. Yes it’s bigger and contributes more but is that gap forever widening and growing?

That said I’m not denigrating the effort they put in nor am I sure what else they can offer...the subscriptions literally buy some of the club so it’s way more than just a donation. So maybe it’s more of a rebrand and a massaging of the message that’s needed.

RyeSloan

You are correct and it's once again an example where there is a difficult path to travel. We have many supporters who refuse to join because we are "too close" to the Club and claim we are not truly independent. Likewise we are not the only shareholder. It may not be possible for the Club to promote our cause at the expense of other shareholder groups. We do not claim to get everything right but we must continue to try and keep the message simple. Our principal shareholder has agreed to have new shares issued which means that money donated to HSL can go straight to our Manager to help put a better product on the park. So, if Hibs supporters want to help put better players on the park we invite them to donate, but only if they can afford to do so.

Others are right to say we have not been helped by fellow "supporters" decrying our message whereas Hearts and Aberdeen have not had these headwinds to deal with.

We now own over 18% of the Club and our donations are helping so please spread the word. HSL Members will be represented very soon on the Board which is our first major milestone.


HSL

[RyeSloan]

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RyeSloan

You are correct and it's once again an example where there is a difficult path to travel. We have many supporters who refuse to join because we are "too close" to the Club and claim we are not truly independent. Likewise we are not the only shareholder. It may not be possible for the Club to promote our cause at the expense of other shareholder groups. We do not claim to get everything right but we must continue to try and keep the message simple. Our principal shareholder has agreed to have new shares issued which means that money donated to HSL can go straight to our Manager to help put a better product on the park. So, if Hibs supporters want to help put better players on the park we invite them to donate, but only if they can afford to do so.

Others are right to say we have not been helped by fellow "supporters" decrying our message whereas Hearts and Aberdeen have not had these headwinds to deal with.

We now own over 18% of the Club and our donations are helping so please spread the word. HSL Members will be represented very soon on the Board which is our first major milestone.


HSL

Appreciate the reply and all power to you guys and I hope you continue to increase the membership