@Chairwyc , remember when we renamed the ground before?
I can't actually remember what it was rename too, but seem to vaguely remember it was for about 60-80k?
Not a bad little sum, but surely not worth the massive bad feeling it generated,
Whilst some had strong feelings about it, I can't say the Causeway Stadium episode bothered me greatly and it did seem like a sensible way of obtaining funds. Everyone I know just kept referring to the stadium as Adams Park throughout.
I would think the club's greatest benefactor would have been more concerned that the club do what they need to do to survive, including selling naming rights of the stadium, than with having his own name attached to the stadium.
we don't know what he would have thought, since he was no longer alive
I actually don't think that's important, what is important is how we as the club whose future he helped secure choose to honour him
Interesting that you talk about what he would have wanted though, because of course during the run up to Steve Hayes becoming the owner of the football club, Frank Adams granddaughter Karen, spoke brilliantly at a meeting where she said that her grandfather would have been "horrified" at the thought of the football club being in the ownership of one individual
I wonder if he would have felt the same at the prospect of a consortium investing in the club but without ownership being conceded (as would be the case if Option 2, the minority shareholding, were adopted?)
Steve Hayes didn't gain full ownership of the football club in the first instance
I would suggest that there is the possibility that giving up even a minority stake would be the first step along the road to giving up full ownership, when the money runs out again
@eric_plant said:
Steve Hayes didn't gain full ownership of the football club in the first instance
I would suggest that there is the possibility that giving up even a minority stake would be the first step along the road to giving up full ownership, when the money runs out again
I agree with @eric_plant on this. As soon as the vote in favour of allowing Steve Hayes to have a minority interest was passed it then became inevitable that the second vote would follow. A similar situaiton would be likely to happen again.
I remember clearly, on both votes, Ivor Beeks strongly selling the need to vote to allow Steve Hayes' involvement/ownership as the only option apart from certain death of the football club. I didn't believe Beeks then (and had suspicions that, between the first and second votes, the finances of the club were managed and reported in such a way as to make the case for change at the second vote appear stronger) and I still think the change was railroaded through without proper consideration of alternatives.
We now find ourselves - after the club has made a good start on the road to recovery from the disastrous situation it was in when Steve Hayes left and significantly reduced the debt - with the current chairman telling us that voting to allow involvement/ownership of persons unkown is the only option apart from possible death of the football club and certain relegation to National League South or below. I have not yet made up my mind whether I believe this or not, but the Hayes experience and memories of Ivor Beeks campaigning the last time around has made me vary wary of trusting what I am being told.
And surely it was divesting the club of Mr Hayes and having to pay him off that has put us in this financial position and yet we seem to have achieved much the same as we did under his ownership but without a pot to p*** in.
Simple solution - don't spend what we haven't got. If that means we play in the Conference South, so be it. It shouldn't be a case of we need such and such to meet the wage bill, the budget should be set to our income
I can't get beyond the phrase "history repeating itself", and it seems quite worrying that we're only a small handful of years on from almost disaster, yet strongly pitching to go the same route again!
Thing is the way lower league football is set up we are almost certainly not far from disaster whatever turn is taken next. No-one is in a position to say what is likely to happen in the next few months.
so will all that cutbacks we have had to do over the last few seasons we still cant cut even with our finances how can that be exactlty we dont exacly spend much on the playing budget etc our outgoings must be one of the lowest in the football league .
@Chris said:
The underlying reason is that wages for players have spiralled out of control at the highest level, and that has filtered down through the leagues.
well im not sure how that affects us then our wage budget is very low compared to most teams in the bottom two leagues .
@Keith_Allens_Wig said:
Simple solution - don't spend what we haven't got. If that means we play in the Conference South, so be it. It shouldn't be a case of we need such and such to meet the wage bill, the budget should be set to our income
Not really that simple though is it...? Go down to Conference level and we'd get what, 1,500 a week? 2,000? Rattling around in a 10,000 seater as if its Checkatrade games every week. We don't need reminding that in and around Torquay, and it's not just those that some people here don't like either on the board now or in the past that were saying, we were in extreme threat of going out of business had we got relegated. If (and I totally agree it's a big if that still needs full clarification) finances would potentially get us close to that position again, then surely just to carry on as we are purely for the sake of calling ourselves 'fan owned' is blindly sleepwalking into serious trouble.
@eric_plant said:
Steve Hayes didn't gain full ownership of the football club in the first instance
I would suggest that there is the possibility that giving up even a minority stake would be the first step along the road to giving up full ownership, when the money runs out again
The presentation suggested this from my viewpoint. Each year an investor would put more money in than the Trust and therefore own a greater proportion of the club. So after X number of years the investor would own the Club (subject to a positive Legacy vote at 50% in the case of option 2)
So really there are 2 options. Stay as we are or complete ownership by an investor.
Both of these three (sic) options are to be considered
well im not sure how that affects us then our wage budget is very low compared to most teams in the bottom two leagues .
But even though we are prudently run by a competent board and management team, and our wage expenditure is relatively low for the division, the amount of expenditure on salaries is still higher than the income that comes in through gate receipts. This wouldn’t have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, and is the reason that the current football financial model is not sustainable. This isn’t because we don’t charge high enough prices, or get enough people through the door. It’s an underlying structural problem, caused by high wages of players.
It’s not just about players’ wages though, is it Chris? Do we confuse @trevor further by referring to such incidentals as a cool quarter of a million for renovation of the Frank Adams stand roof, repayment of loans from Chairboys’ Funders, maintenance of perhaps the finest playing surface in League 1 etc etc ?
Some very well made points here all painting a very dour picture saying that it is indeed a wider football model issue and not specific to our club .
It has also been raised and rightly pointed out that the report so relied upon by our chairman and FD to encourage sale of our club also points out the majority of other clubs need chairman’s or investor loans to survive.
If we rely on that pessimistIc view, it makes no sense whatsoever to sell any part of our club then . If we are just as at risk either way , under any model, we should stay as we are and be at risk supporter owned and with our destiny in our hands .
@Will_i_ams said:
what % of the sales are the club making with this new food and beverage deal.
Previous to this deal we made 100% of profit .
Under this deal share profit with the external provider.
This is an unhelpful if factual answer. If the previous profit was 50p, and we kept all of it, but now the profit is £100, and we only take a 1% share, we'd be better off even though the deal on the face of it looks pretty bad. I don't know the figures involved of course, but it is easily possible that we make more money through a profit sharing deal.
Comments
what % of the sales are the club making with this new food and beverage deal.
@Chairwyc , remember when we renamed the ground before?
I can't actually remember what it was rename too, but seem to vaguely remember it was for about 60-80k?
Not a bad little sum, but surely not worth the massive bad feeling it generated,
The Causeway Stadium. Great days...
'The Tunnocks Tea Cake Arena.'
Whilst some had strong feelings about it, I can't say the Causeway Stadium episode bothered me greatly and it did seem like a sensible way of obtaining funds. Everyone I know just kept referring to the stadium as Adams Park throughout.
It was a shameful period in the club's history and disrespected the memory of the club's greatest benefactor
https://goo.gl/images/MyG5m3
I would think the club's greatest benefactor would have been more concerned that the club do what they need to do to survive, including selling naming rights of the stadium, than with having his own name attached to the stadium.
we don't know what he would have thought, since he was no longer alive
I actually don't think that's important, what is important is how we as the club whose future he helped secure choose to honour him
Interesting that you talk about what he would have wanted though, because of course during the run up to Steve Hayes becoming the owner of the football club, Frank Adams granddaughter Karen, spoke brilliantly at a meeting where she said that her grandfather would have been "horrified" at the thought of the football club being in the ownership of one individual
I wonder if he would have felt the same at the prospect of a consortium investing in the club but without ownership being conceded (as would be the case if Option 2, the minority shareholding, were adopted?)
Steve Hayes didn't gain full ownership of the football club in the first instance
I would suggest that there is the possibility that giving up even a minority stake would be the first step along the road to giving up full ownership, when the money runs out again
@Uncle_T, Selling the name for relative buttons wasn't a great move though was it.
For the fee received, versus the bad feeling created.
On another note, it's a good point about partial ownership above.
Why would some mystery individual rock in and be content with partial ownership?
I agree with @eric_plant on this. As soon as the vote in favour of allowing Steve Hayes to have a minority interest was passed it then became inevitable that the second vote would follow. A similar situaiton would be likely to happen again.
I remember clearly, on both votes, Ivor Beeks strongly selling the need to vote to allow Steve Hayes' involvement/ownership as the only option apart from certain death of the football club. I didn't believe Beeks then (and had suspicions that, between the first and second votes, the finances of the club were managed and reported in such a way as to make the case for change at the second vote appear stronger) and I still think the change was railroaded through without proper consideration of alternatives.
We now find ourselves - after the club has made a good start on the road to recovery from the disastrous situation it was in when Steve Hayes left and significantly reduced the debt - with the current chairman telling us that voting to allow involvement/ownership of persons unkown is the only option apart from possible death of the football club and certain relegation to National League South or below. I have not yet made up my mind whether I believe this or not, but the Hayes experience and memories of Ivor Beeks campaigning the last time around has made me vary wary of trusting what I am being told.
And surely it was divesting the club of Mr Hayes and having to pay him off that has put us in this financial position and yet we seem to have achieved much the same as we did under his ownership but without a pot to p*** in.
Simple solution - don't spend what we haven't got. If that means we play in the Conference South, so be it. It shouldn't be a case of we need such and such to meet the wage bill, the budget should be set to our income
I can't get beyond the phrase "history repeating itself", and it seems quite worrying that we're only a small handful of years on from almost disaster, yet strongly pitching to go the same route again!
Thing is the way lower league football is set up we are almost certainly not far from disaster whatever turn is taken next. No-one is in a position to say what is likely to happen in the next few months.
so will all that cutbacks we have had to do over the last few seasons we still cant cut even with our finances how can that be exactlty we dont exacly spend much on the playing budget etc our outgoings must be one of the lowest in the football league .
The underlying reason is that wages for players have spiralled out of control at the highest level, and that has filtered down through the leagues.
well im not sure how that affects us then our wage budget is very low compared to most teams in the bottom two leagues .
Not really that simple though is it...? Go down to Conference level and we'd get what, 1,500 a week? 2,000? Rattling around in a 10,000 seater as if its Checkatrade games every week. We don't need reminding that in and around Torquay, and it's not just those that some people here don't like either on the board now or in the past that were saying, we were in extreme threat of going out of business had we got relegated. If (and I totally agree it's a big if that still needs full clarification) finances would potentially get us close to that position again, then surely just to carry on as we are purely for the sake of calling ourselves 'fan owned' is blindly sleepwalking into serious trouble.
The presentation suggested this from my viewpoint. Each year an investor would put more money in than the Trust and therefore own a greater proportion of the club. So after X number of years the investor would own the Club (subject to a positive Legacy vote at 50% in the case of option 2)
So really there are 2 options. Stay as we are or complete ownership by an investor.
Both of these three (sic) options are to be considered
@DevC as you are in Gestapo mode...are you a member of the trust Ja Oder nein? Are you really an mk troll.. yes or no?
But even though we are prudently run by a competent board and management team, and our wage expenditure is relatively low for the division, the amount of expenditure on salaries is still higher than the income that comes in through gate receipts. This wouldn’t have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, and is the reason that the current football financial model is not sustainable. This isn’t because we don’t charge high enough prices, or get enough people through the door. It’s an underlying structural problem, caused by high wages of players.
It’s not just about players’ wages though, is it Chris? Do we confuse @trevor further by referring to such incidentals as a cool quarter of a million for renovation of the Frank Adams stand roof, repayment of loans from Chairboys’ Funders, maintenance of perhaps the finest playing surface in League 1 etc etc ?
The central problem with football as a whole is unsustainably high wages for players.
The days where you could legitimately as a fan claim that you "pay their wages" are long long gone.
A £320 season ticket, probably pays a squad player for 3-4 days.
Previous to this deal we made 100% of profit .
Under this deal share profit with the external provider.
Some very well made points here all painting a very dour picture saying that it is indeed a wider football model issue and not specific to our club .
It has also been raised and rightly pointed out that the report so relied upon by our chairman and FD to encourage sale of our club also points out the majority of other clubs need chairman’s or investor loans to survive.
If we rely on that pessimistIc view, it makes no sense whatsoever to sell any part of our club then . If we are just as at risk either way , under any model, we should stay as we are and be at risk supporter owned and with our destiny in our hands .
This is an unhelpful if factual answer. If the previous profit was 50p, and we kept all of it, but now the profit is £100, and we only take a 1% share, we'd be better off even though the deal on the face of it looks pretty bad. I don't know the figures involved of course, but it is easily possible that we make more money through a profit sharing deal.