Fan Ownership

[Cataplana]

If you are keen on the idea of fan ownership, it would be worth your while reading this discuss involving members of Britain's Biggest Not Quite Fan Owned Club.

The petty officiousness, the jostling for position, and the way that cleverer operators play the system to their advantage, are surely enough to kill the concept stone dead.

A football club cannot be run on a democrat basis in anything but name only.

https://www.hmfckickback.co.uk/index.php?/topic/186545-foh/page/2/

[Smartie]

It will be interesting to see how Hearts get on, as the world’s first club to be genuinely 100% fanny owned.

[Vault Boy]

It will be interesting to see how Hearts get on, as the world’s first club to be genuinely 100% fanny owned.

🤣

[Cataplana]

It will be interesting to see how Hearts get on, as the world’s first club to be genuinely 100% fanny owned.

They have always been owned by fannies.

[Bostonhibby]

Sounds like the world's biggest bowling club committee and I like the bit where they hand all the money over to fund business as usual and the latest idea Mrs doctor Budge has.



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[Keith_M]

I'm actually not in favour of Fans directly running the club.

I think it's a good idea, though, to have enough shares in the hands of Fans to prevent dodgy goings on.

[twiceinathens]

Fan ownership sounds a great concept but you only have to look at any fans' website (including this one) to see how impractical it is. Fans vary wildly in their evaluation of individual players, never mind on long term strategy on running the club.

[Barney McGrew]

Fan ownership sounds a great concept but you only have to look at any fans' website (including this one) to see how impractical it is. Fans vary wildly in their evaluation of individual players, never mind on long term strategy on running the club.

Which is why it will never ever work.

Which is why I hope the FOH take over across the road as soon as possible :greengrin

[Cataplana]

I'm actually not in favour of Fans directly running the club.

I think it's a good idea, though, to have enough shares in the hands of Fans to prevent dodgy goings on.

The problem is keeping track of who has a mandate, and electing officials with a spine.

Fan ownership has resulted in then blowing an utter fortune, that even the most profligate private enterprise would stop short of.

It's amusing to point to Yam hubris as being at the route. The fact is all fans are the same, it's just that they are more transparent in their need for status.

[Pretty Boy]

Surely everyone understands that fan ownership doesn't involve every fan actively running the club and interfering in every decision making process. There is still a board of directors and commercial decision makers who oversee the operation of the business. Barcelona are, to all intents and purposes, fan owned and it doesn't seem to do them too much harm.

There seems a misconception, deliberate or otherwise, that fan ownership would see fans voting on team selection, sponsorship deals, sacking managers and so on. That simply wouldn't happen. Any Hearts fans who believe the transfer from Budge to FOH is going to see the rank and members wield any more influence in the day to day running than they do now is living in cloud cuckoo land.

[Diclonius]

All clubs in Germany are fan owned and it's the best league in the world.

[Cataplana]

All clubs in Germany are fan owned and it's the best league in the world.

A country famed and respected for it's organisational abilities, and it's respect for rules .

[greenlex]

Just spent a bit of time reading through that. What a shambles they are. Blind faith at its best. The penny really has dropped.

[Hibby Bairn]

At the end of the day football clubs will succeed or fail largely on the recruitment of players. There are of course many other cogs but those clubs with the biggest wage budgets will almost always be at the top end of tables and win trophies. They just need to get the budget spent well. Most of the other stuff is of a minor nature.

However in a very low % of cases the recruitment goes wrong and that is the case at Hearts just now..

[Keith_M]

All clubs in Germany are fan owned and it's the best league in the world.


Almost all clubs in the Bundesliga, are majority fan owned (the 50%+1 ruling). Volkswagen own Wolfsburg and the billionaire SAP Owner, Dietmar Hopp, owns Hoffenheim.

They bent the rules for some guy to take a majority stake in 1860 Munich and that went badly wrong.

[Ozyhibby]

Surely everyone understands that fan ownership doesn't involve every fan actively running the club and interfering in every decision making process. There is still a board of directors and commercial decision makers who oversee the operation of the business. Barcelona are, to all intents and purposes, fan owned and it doesn't seem to do them too much harm.

There seems a misconception, deliberate or otherwise, that fan ownership would see fans voting on team selection, sponsorship deals, sacking managers and so on. That simply wouldn't happen. Any Hearts fans who believe the transfer from Budge to FOH is going to see the rank and members wield any more influence in the day to day running than they do now is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Absolutely fan ownership can work. The problem is the transition. The election at Barca are hotly contested affairs where candidates put together teams of top businessmen and financiers to show their credentials.
Right now the average yam has no idea who runs FOH and will only take interest when it becomes the club that they are running. Then the election of a new board may end up with a ‘well kent face’ rather than the best people to take the club forward. It will need a failure for fans to realise how important it is.
We saw that with the election of fans reps to our board which IMO only this year attracted a decent field of candidates who knew what they wanted to achieve.


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[Cataplana]

Absolutely fan ownership can work. The problem is the transition. The election at Barca are hotly contested affairs where candidates put together teams of top businessmen and financiers to show their credentials.
Right now the average yam has no idea who runs FOH and will only take interest when it becomes the club that they are running. Then the election of a new board may end up with a ‘well kent face’ rather than the best people to take the club forward. It will need a failure for fans to realise how important it is.
We saw that with the election of fans reps to our board which IMO only this year attracted a decent field of candidates who knew what they wanted to achieve.


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Aside from the fact one resigned due to abuse, what exactly did they want to achieve? I have no idea.

[jacomo]

If you are keen on the idea of fan ownership, it would be worth your while reading this discuss involving members of Britain's Biggest Not Quite Fan Owned Club.

The petty officiousness, the jostling for position, and the way that cleverer operators play the system to their advantage, are surely enough to kill the concept stone dead.

A football club cannot be run on a democrat basis in anything but name only.

https://www.hmfckickback.co.uk/index.php?/topic/186545-foh/page/2/


To be fair, if any other club made decisions based on whether or not Hearts made a success of it, they’d never get anything done.

[Cataplana]

To be fair, if any other club made decisions based on whether or not Hearts made a success of it, they’d never get anything done.

I think if you do the opposite from what Hearts do, in any situation, you won't go far wrong.

[jacomo]

I think if you do the opposite from what Hearts do, in any situation, you won't go far wrong.


This is sound advice.

[Just Alf]

I'm actually not in favour of Fans directly running the club.

I think it's a good idea, though, to have enough shares in the hands of Fans to prevent dodgy goings on.Agreed, that's why I think the Hibs model was the way to go.

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[nonshinyfinish]

Surely everyone understands that fan ownership doesn't involve every fan actively running the club and interfering in every decision making process. There is still a board of directors and commercial decision makers who oversee the operation of the business. Barcelona are, to all intents and purposes, fan owned and it doesn't seem to do them too much harm.

There seems a misconception, deliberate or otherwise, that fan ownership would see fans voting on team selection, sponsorship deals, sacking managers and so on. That simply wouldn't happen. Any Hearts fans who believe the transfer from Budge to FOH is going to see the rank and members wield any more influence in the day to day running than they do now is living in cloud cuckoo land.

I see this confusion so often that I think we need two different phrases.

I have always seen 'fan ownership' as being about stewardship, protecting the club from asset strippers or chancers, along the lines of the 50+1 rule in Germany. Obviously there are examples of mad Football-Manager-by-committee schemes – was it Ebbsfleet that did this? – but 99% of the time fan ownership is not about day-to-day running of the club.

[Cataplana]

I see this confusion so often that I think we need two different phrases.

I have always seen 'fan ownership' as being about stewardship, protecting the club from asset strippers or chancers, along the lines of the 50+1 rule in Germany. Obviously there are examples of mad Football-Manager-by-committee schemes – was it Ebbsfleet that did this? – but 99% of the time fan ownership is not about day-to-day running of the club.

I would argue it is as easy as pie for anyone to dominate and manipulate fan owners. They are, by nature, a fragmented bunch with egos to be stroked.

[nonshinyfinish]

I would argue it is as easy as pie for anyone to dominate and manipulate fan owners. They are, by nature, a fragmented bunch with egos to be stroked.

Perhaps, but the difference is that when a club is owned by a small number of individuals, you'd only need to pay off/stroke the egos of a handful of people. How would you go about taking control of a club owned by thousands of minor shareholders?

The problem can also be avoided by the German approach – even if you could wrestle the shares off folk, the rules just don't allow it.

Fan ownership doesn't make a buyout by some prick impossible, but it is a useful safeguard IMO.

[Cataplana]

Perhaps, but the difference is that when a club is owned by a small number of individuals, you'd only need to pay off/stroke the egos of a handful of people. How would you go about taking control of a club owned by thousands of minor shareholders?

The problem can also be avoided by the German approach – even if you could wrestle the shares off folk, the rules just don't allow it.

Fan ownership doesn't make a buyout by some prick impossible, but it is a useful safeguard IMO.

Until the club has gone tits up after a series of poor decisions that result in it biting off the hand of anyone that can get them to the end of the season.

Hearts had shareholders when they let in Mercer and Romanov. If you are the only show in town, the choice is usually you, or extinction.