Is the board selling to that...

Exeter has been majority fan owned for over 20 years. A combination of keeping the payroll down, less than £5m, and making a profit from transfers over the last few years sees them making a small profit year on year. (Novel idea…)

The issue faced by BFC is the bloated squad and resulting losses. It will take time to reset this situation and will undoubtedly mean at best stagnation until the finances can be reigned in, unless the current owners wish to carry on ‘investing’. The last window suggests not.

These problems are not unique to us and typically arise post a relegation and a failure to gain promotion quickly after. Many of the football clubs falling in to admin follow a similar path.

 

Of course there’ll be people interested in buying the club. I’d do it for one but don’t have the money. However, the owners will quite rightly want their investment back which is probably a lot more than the club is currently valued at.

Whatever your thoughts are on whether they’re crap owners or not, they’ve pumped millions into a small football club in a working class northern town that has very few assets. I can’t see how the club can be worth anywhere near what their investment has been.

In the same way you wouldn’t sell your house for £50k less than it’s worth, neither will the current owners sell for below their valuation. That will only change when they think they can’t or won’t find it anymore.

 

Unless the owners are financially illiterate (that is not to be dismissed), the notion that they would want the totality of their investment back on a sale is nonsensical. Just because an investment has a cost price it is irrelevant in a transaction. The issue they face is carry on subsidising a loss making asset or sell for a nominal amount.

 

An asset is worth what someone is happy to pay. At this time, if BFC was liquidated, there wouldn't be much in terms of proceeds. The council own the land, our players aren't worth much.

So if someone wanted to buy it, they'd essentially be taking on a position, at least in the short term, where they'd be spending millions to subsidise excessive costs. In a sane world, nobody would buy that at a price in excess of what this bunch paid initially, plus covering the equity injections.

Having said that, football is far from sane and there seem plenty of wealthy mugs who have spaffed millions in the name of ego and other things.

I'd be surprised if the current owners weren't open to offers, but that would require overcoming their denial and hubris and accept failure and a loss on investment.

 

This considered. Why don't they spend more and try and accomplish something?

 

They are spending between £5-8m a year... They have stated they are aiming for promotion, Parekh stated he felt the squad was good enough for the top 6.

It's easy for us to say, just subsidise us a little bit more in the hope we manage to get in the top 6 and happen to win 3 playoff games. For our owners, we're the other side of the world, something they thought they could make money from and it's the exact opposite. And if we did get promoted, if they wanted to stay there, they'd have to find even more money to pump in. You either play the game of snakes and ladders and accept over time a football club will drain your wealth, or you cut your cloth and you break even, and where you are you are.

 

As I see it owning a Football club is a vanity project there's no way or very little chance of you getting a return on your money. I'm no business guru but any one spending close to and some beyond 100% of there income on wages is just madness. There will be people who want to buy us and yes maybe things will get better but they could get a whole lot worse. It's a minor miracle that only one club of any size in Bury have gone to the wall. Hopefully there's a multi millionaire who wants to splash his/her cash on us.
The Brentford/Brighton project look doable for a club our size but they have taken massive investment to get to where they are. That would be amazing if we could find someone with business nous and more importantly the pockets deep enough to achieve that.

 

Flip side of this though is there are some positives for someone to buy.
Firstly a cheap punt in terms of Football v the rewards of success. 2-3 years in PL or around top end of Championship changes everything.
A club with history
A club with an established loyal fan base
A club with good potential to increase that fan base

All of the above is what Hollywood tasked someone to find for them in a club and they opted for Wrexham.

Yes that person would have to throw some serious dollar at it but it comes down to if the person backs themselves.

 

There are plenty of people who back themselves. And there are plenty of clubs who have bigger fan bases and a more successful history. There are 8 former PL sides in league 1... 2 in league 2. At the end of the day, the league structure only allows 3 clubs up every year, so throwing money hasn't always guaranteed success.

I've no doubt a very rich person could come in and splash cash. Given we don't own the ground anymore and we're in decline, would they choose to buy us, or is another club more attractive? But as I touched on, if you valued this club properly, the current owners shouldn't be getting a return on their 'investment' should they choose to sell.

 

Not owning the ground doesn’t necessarily mean we are less attractive it just means we are a cheaper option.

Why does anyone buy a specific club? Bournemouth is just one example, the guy who bankrolled them before selling had no interest in football yet alone buying a club.
He bought a property on the Sandbank area and employed a local builder to work on it, it just happened that that builder was the Chairman and talked him into buying 50% towards building local community links.
As for returns the current owners it’s almost impossible for them to get a return on what they have put in.

 

I'd be inclined to buy something with assets rather than not, but obviously, I'm lacking a billion or two to throw into a bottomless pit!

Time will tell. Our current owners would need to be open to offers or actively instructing a sale behind the scenes, and someone would have to be interested.

From a personal perspective, if football could ever get to a point where it's just about sport, with no billionaires involved, that would be a whole lot better.