Business Model

Our business model is no secret. We are looking to buy young players on the cheap, develop them into saleable assets. This is the prime objective and seems to come before stability in the championship or onwards success. They won't break the rules like Wednesday, Derby allegedly and dont have the fair play! parachute payments. No loanees as it goes against this philosophy. The aim it appears is to make the club stand alone and self sufficient. But let me question this:-

- Isn't the objective of football to achieve on field success and entertain the fans enough to stay loyal, put more money in? Then perhaps that leads to long term stability.
- Secondly, when the owners want self sufficiency im ok with that, BUT... we need to be in it together. So when player sales is one of the 4 main revenue streams alongside ticket sales, TV money and sponsorship, we really mean a lot is coming from our pockets. Fans as ticket holders and even as sponsors. So where and when will the owners put their hands in their pocket.
- Giving tickets to NHS is great and admirable and costs the owners nothing, It should be applauded, but why dont the owners pay from their pockets for these tickets. Serve the community and contribute personally as we are all doing. Is that allowed in FFP rules?
- Any business that buys an asset (in this case a player) they need investment. To build, develop, promote etc. Get a bigger return. We coach and play these players but surely playing alongside better quality, loans and older heads will help develop faster, better. Am i wrong?
- The club model has proved one thing that many have eluded to over the years. BFC could be a fan owned club, it could be managed as a business community owned. After all what the new owners brought to the table is a simple business model and a few quid for the actual purchase, which i would guess wasn't investment directly into the club funds. They didn't bring football experience and knowledge, they didn't bring a CEO with years of British league experience. Imagine if the board was voted from fans, the ownership as a trust, solid football people running the day to day football strategy and business skills running the administration. Would the model be the same, different or the same but better?

I think there are a lot of questions we could all ask and maybe some energy towards what could be done, would be an interesting journey as well as all the comments ad criticisms we often engage with.

So when checking your pockets for cash and your heads for ideas, think what would you propose? How should we run the club?

 

A fair comment, because if the club has to be self-sufficient then it clearly doesn't need billionaires (??) to run it. My vote would go to (JLW)BL as Chairman, Dyson as CEO, Loko The Tyke as Head Coach. Bossman as Communications Director (to supervise Whitey!). In the interests of diversity I'd have Redhelen and Jamdrop as Assistant Head Coaches to keep Loko's feet on the ground. Sorry though, I can't find a place for Red Rain as we'd never be allowed to turn the floodlights on!

 

A great post. It would be amazing to have a fan driven club, but I do have a question.

As you say, we have been shown that running the club as it currently is, we could probably have a fan based owners who had to input very little in the way of funds. However, would the fans use the same model?

I’m pretty sure if I had a say in the running of the club I would have wanted to keep the likes of Keifer. This is a gamble I would be more likely to take as a fan than an investor. I’m not being flippant calling it a gamble, the main money streams in appear to be from selling players. And keeping players would probably help our success... but what about injuries, or they just didn’t have the impact we thought they would? It could leave a big hole in finances that a fan based ownership could not have the clout to insure against.

 

Love the last part, but I reckon we could lock Red
Rain in a solar lit office, with a load of monitors showing the from every position and he could write his reports till his Hearts content!!
I definitely think Ben should have a shout as head coach because his media know how has come on leaps and bounds during this lockdown! Might be a bit different for him the other side if the mic though!

 

Excellent post Icer

these locusts have not spent a penny or have they improved anything on or off the field. BFC is simply a cash cow to raise profits for them to bank. Any success or momentum that we gain “on the pitch” is constantly sold ASAP so this business model means the club will constantly go backwards with manager after manager giving the impossible job of trying to build again with inexperienced and out of their depth players or “gambles” as they should be called. The club will forever keep trotting our the “he wanted to leave” line when they sell the best players for under their market values.

the fan zone = run by volunteers
NHS tickets = given away by the fans (not the club)
Match day experience at Oakwell is woeful
Catering = a disgrace
Communication with the fans = laughable
Scoreboard = I’ve seen bigger in the shop window at Curry’s
no ambition and no investment

the list of failures from this board goes on and on. League one will mean yet again the best players sold to balance the books and we replace them with rubbish and the Groundhog Day circle of sh*t starts again. Mid table in league one with Dane just a puppet mouthpiece given the fans flannel.

look what happened at NICE they were ran out of the club. The disconnect between the owners and supports is massive.

A community run club would be brilliant or a local reds fan who sits in the stand wins 100 million plus in Euromillions and buys BFC !

 

Point me in the direction of a fan run club in the top two tiers of a European league, just so we can see 'how its done'

 

Some great points and of course a business like ours will only remain succesful as long as there is interest from fans.
You need fan engagement. Imho they have been a massive let down for proffesional businessmen in how they treat the fan base. Their narrative (as it was with the other clubs they have bought) was how they were going to promote us going forward, ie better advertising, higher profile,better this better that....i have seen nothing in their tenure to suggest that has improved.
They had a great opportunity this time round, to understand what was required to consolidate our position at this level. A favorite saying of mine is "learn to listen and listen to learn"....i suggest they do the same.

 

you probably wont have heard of them but to name a few
Barcelona
Real Madrid
Athletic Bilbao

 

If I was Chien & co, I would call being ‘ran out of the club’ for circa £80 million profit a result not a negative.
They will never replicate that result at that level at any football club again.
If someone came in and offered £30million for us, I suspect they’d sell as well.

 

Posted this before bt still cannot understand why these people bought our club. despite the asset striping comments on here the reality is the profit on player sales is peanuts to this lot. we are about to lose around 6 million quid when relegated..a couple of million invested 6 months ago could have stopped that..so wheres the business strategy in that?..the increased revenue when promoted could have paid better wages to retain/recruit better players in a more profitable league with higher gates and more chance if tv money...bt no..so wheres the strategy in that ?. season tickets sales were up and could have gone up again in this league if ya challenge for top 6...bt no.relagation sees them fall so..wheres the strategy in that ?. i have joined this debate on numerous occasions on here but still cannot answer the basic question.....why did these people buy our club....over to anyone who has an idea....

 

Totally agree, I don’t buy into the asset stripping thing either, the only remote possibility I see is if they believed they could buy the land and ground and create another Chelsea like Bates did. Flawed though I know as it’s not London but aside of Land I see no other reason.

 

Helps when you have circa 150 thousand members paying every year for privilege.
Probably only works at that scale,

 

And what do their current debts stand at?

 

Just had a quick check - Barca had debts of nearly 900 million Euros last year. Great.

Madrid over 500m.

I'll give you Bilbao - but even they had over 100m contribution from public funds for the new stadium.

Does make you wonder why no one else follows that model, certainly not any top clubs over here.

 

The only thing i can think of is they are purchasing several clubs, to raise their profile, all over the place(their portfolio looks good). If all these clubs are self supporting they own bits n pieces of sporting clubs or assets, which they may sell in future for a profit and of course isnt costing them a red cent. Low risk business ....errr i guess.

 

The only problem with that theory is every club is made up of different consortiums

 

Yea i know....just a guess im afraid.
If i were rich and a mate asked me to come into an interprise like this id want to know what was the risk, how much id need to invest and how much id get back.

 

Beth for CEO

 

Madrid only club in the world that can’t go bankrupt

 

I think Exeter is closest you can find here being successful.