How to buy Rangers....or any other football club for that matter...a #fanownership Model PART 1

Ok first up I am no author and my grammar and spelling suck....

Second up, this is a draft, it is not perfect, nothing is, so give us a break if it is not right first time; and just because I put something in writing now does not mean that either it is my opinion for all time or even that it is my opinion now....i may just have made a mistake. I am entitled to change my mind

Third and finally I have no idea how to do a blog, this will no doubt show until i get the hang of it, so anyone out there with hints or tips let me know



Anyway terms and Conditions over....

"I have been contacted on twitter by a number of Rangers fans who want to see their Club move on from the torment it has gone through in recent years. They see #fanownership as part or all of the solution.

The example of what, most recently, has been happening at Hearts and Dunfermline appears to have Rangers fans asking "if it can be done at these clubs, why can it not be done at Rangers?"

Anyway, a few folk appear to have cottoned on to the fact that I may know a little about this subject and enough of them have been asking my opinion on how it could be done that I thought rather than converse via direct message everyone who has been contacting me on twitter, a wee blog post would be a good idea (hopefully that remains the case).


This has the possibility of being a long post so rather than ramble on describing why you would do X and Y i will try and break it down into sections for use over the next few days and hopefully develop the direction of the blog from any questions that folk ask (if anyone bothers to read this)

So.......



PART 1.


Aims of a Fan-owned Club

That Fans can see their Club run transparently, with the Fans and at the Heart of the Club, and the protection that no single person or group can ever again run the Club for their own ends and potentially, either personally or as part of an external group, extract profit from the Club.....then what should you do?

These aims are best satisfied by a Cooperative One Member One Vote (OMOV) organisation.

Collective Share Ownership

The one advantage that Rangers Fans have over most other Scottish Clubs is that the shares are listed on the AIM exchange. In theory this means that as and when you raise the money you can simply go to the market and buy them.

There is Liquidity in the market though how long this remains the case is unclear.

This availability of shares is unlike most Football Clubs where you are most likely dealing with one benefactor owner who wants to sell his shares en-masse and so the full value for all the shares needs to be raised before you can buy any.

So your first issue is how do you organise potentially thousands of Fans together so that the financial muscle of lots of small contributions add up and is controllable via a proper management structure?

Fundamentally you need to create a Legal Holding Company that can take in the regular financial contributions from Fans, that can legally purchase shares in the Club you are trying to buy, and is capable of being democratically controlled to fulfil the original Aims of transparent OMOV fanownership while not ending up a looking like a badly run Bowling Club

My suggestion would be to set up Community Interest Company with Cooperative articles and containing an Asset Lock. Have a look at the following two sites. If you have a quick read/download it should be plain as to the advantages this brings to #fanownership:


CIC Regulator

CIC Coop model rules....bottom right of the page

This gives you a Legal Company that can accept donations from Fans and legally buy shares in an AIM listed Company.

There are other Legal forms that can do this but the CIC is my favourite, just because it is so flexible as well as the particular Asset Lock rule.

I am told that the government solicitor that wrote the rules of CIC's when they were being introduced in 1995 specifically had football clubs in mind with the Asset Lock rule as Clubs tend to be non-profit making organisations with large assets in Stadia, which, if Clubs are not careful, can be taken advantage of by bad owners who mortgage or sell them, and, if it all goes pear-shaped, leave the Club in debt and homeless. The Asset lock can go some way to making sure this simply cannot happen.........sound familiar?

I will leave it at that for the moment you have plenty to read with the two posted links and hopefully you will ask some questions which I can use to develop the next post.

But, as an encouragement to all those Rangers Fans that may end up reading this, there is no doubt in my mind that you are in a once in a generation position to make this happen at your Club, to park all your individual differences and unite around the single issue of Fanownership and make it happen for your Club.

Have a nice day.


Follow me and ask any questions at @rchrdtknsn
#fanownership #fanownedfriday