Venky’s, HMRC…The Plot Thickens ?

[Lancs Rover]

1 hour ago, Upside Down said:

100% Spot on. 

The solution I would propose is there is heavy regulation on clubs' spending. The 70% of revenue for wages is a good idea. 

The revenue needs to be distributed evenly through the divisions and get rid of that parachute payments shyte.

50+1 is also essential. The reason Bayern dominate the Bundesliga is because the TV deal is negotiated individually by each club as opposed to collectively a la the Premier League. If it was a collective deal the Bundesliga would most likely be far more competitive. 

Funnily enough Bayern Munchen are trying to get rid of 50+1 rule.

The whole structure needs to change. Football clubs should be community owned. Without the community there is no football. 

I think we'd better comparing German football from the point of view of their fans' match day experience. It's so much more connected. Beer, fans mixing, pricing structure, building alocal identity. German clubs started off as, and many still are, sports clubs with football being just one community aspect.

The fan experience reminds me of rugby league.

We have only overarching problem: we don't get enough people into the ground on a regular basis. But these fans are there. And the fan base isn't fixed and static. It can be grown.

If I were Swag, I'd be tapping up the  Lancashire rugby league clubs like Wigan and St Helens and asking them how they've survived and thrived on relatively small gates and catchment areas. And seeking their fans' opinions. Rugby League is brilliant for fans of all sorts because they embraced change.

We need an imaginative and informed five and ten year plan to get fans in. Without more fans, it doesn't matter who owns the majority of shares.

(Posted from my bath.)

Edited September 30, 2023 by Tabula Rasa

[47er]

33 minutes ago, roverblue said:

It’s just too much of a gamblers attitude for me to get behind. Why risk it all and for what benefit?

Yes the Venkys are idiots but the fact is they keep the club going at the moment. The point at which that stops (which might be soon based on the tax/fraud stuff) I’ll revisit my position. Or if a credible alternative comes forward. 

Lets risk slow death instead.

[K-Hod]

55 minutes ago, roverblue said:

It’s just too much of a gamblers attitude for me to get behind. Why risk it all and for what benefit?

Yes the Venkys are idiots but the fact is they keep the club going at the moment. The point at which that stops (which might be soon based on the tax/fraud stuff) I’ll revisit my position. Or if a credible alternative comes forward. 

They’re keeping the club going? Low bar, that. Shambles after shambles, reduction in budgets, players leaving on frees, but yeah, they’re keeping us going….

[tomphil]

24 minutes ago, Tabula Rasa said:

I think we'd better comparing German football from the point of view of their fans' match day experience. It's so much more connected. Beer, fans mixing, pricing structure, building alocal identity. German clubs started off as, and many still are, sports clubs with football being just one community aspect.

The fan experience reminds me of rugby league.

We have only overarching problem: we don't get enough people into the ground on a regular basis. But these fans are there. And the fan base isn't fixed and static. It can be grown.

If I were Swag, I'd be tapping up the  Lancashire rugby league clubs like Wigan and St Helens and asking them how they've survived and thrived on relatively small gates and catchment areas. And seeking their fans' opinions. Rugby League is brilliant for fans of all sorts because they embraced change.

We need an imaginative and informed five and ten year plan to get fans in. Without more fans, it doesn't matter who owns the majority of shares.

(Posted from my bath.)

Yes its needed out of box thinking but no point in expecting that from a downgrader in charge who by his own admission has always been a squeeze what you have executive. He has no experience of building up any football club he's just been in position at ailing clubs going backwards, not his fault but brought in to do a certain job.

He's missed several tricks here to kick us forwards a bit off the pitch after we've had a bit of success on it but there is no other ambition but to hit certain targets that are or have been propped up by money from the VH group.

Rovers is unique because we have the space and we still have the biggest 'unactive' fanbase of all the clubs around here. Maybe barring Bolton who - in LEAGUE 1 - have managed to recapture their lapsed Prem fans rarely seen in their Championship years, that's how to run a club.

[Atko's Engine]

12 hours ago, Bethnal said:

It’s a narcissistic character trait to wade into subjects outside of your own expertise (irony alert on this post) and there’s a clear case for business leaders who take a shining to the limelight to be narcissists, whether natural-born or acquired.

The reason we see so much failure of football club ownership, I believe, is because the people who decide that owning a football club is something they’d like to do - usually despite not really being deep-pocketed enough, being savvy enough or even being fans of the club - aren’t up to it and are too stubborn to recognise their shortcomings, as is the case with a lot of narcissists.

Whether you deserve the praise or not (and I firmly believe our current owners don’t, for example), when running a business that is successful, you’re liable to develop an inflated sense of self.

What we’re seeing with a lot of the incompetent owners in the football system is the perfect storm of people who believe they cannot fail and market conditions that they simple cannot contend with.

It’s not unique to football (see technology companies that fail after raising eye-watering sums and squandering it all), but it seems that football has unique outcomes.

When a football club fails, a town and a community suffers. The very football pyramid itself suffers. When a startup that caters to a ridiculous niche serving little to no purpose fails, it affects the employees and investors’ portfolios but nothing much wider.

There simply needs to be an evaluation of what a football club is, above and beyond its fundamental status as a vehicle for capital/limited company/“business.”

I think I’d hoped the independent regulator/governing body/whatever that’s been mooted/proposed would be in effect and beginning to challenge the existing system.

As it is, the body that governs the top level of our domestic game has fostered, promoted and sustained the existing paradigm, which is inherently unsustainable and very possibly a poster child for the question, “what happens when the worst people you can imagine chase the most amount of money, with the least amount of forward planning and oversight?”

I think we’re all at least loosely aware of the “50+1” model in Germany, but even that is a one-club top league, basically, so there’s clearly no silver bullet.

I believe football clubs are assets of community value and should have safeguards around them. Part of that should be community ownership and I think only when feckless owners can be challenged and punished for mismanagement (the owners, not the football club) will you see fewer chancers riding roughshod over the clubs, as we see currently.

I’ll admit that it could be confirmation bias, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Tony Bloom’s measured and sustainable approach at Brighton came from an owner who is a lifelong fan. Same goes for Matthew Benham.

Of course, they’re very likely to be exceptionally capable (I know some that work for Tony Bloom’s firm and attest to that) but they are examples of what happens when owners think not what their purchase of a football club can do for them, but what they can do for their (in the sense that Rovers are “ours” as fans) football club.

Wonderful post, totally agree.

For those having a go at Eddie, I can see his logic too. There certainly is a sense of entitlement amongst many fans, and I don't think that would change with fan-based ownership because there is a large (often vocal) number fans of any club who will treat those in charge with disdain & mistrust, and will always feel they can do a better job without knowing exactly what the reality of a club's position us behind the scenes. That, to a large extent, reflects modern society.

Rovers are unique in that Venkys, using a scarcely disguised agent-led ownership model that the FA, PL etc didn't see fit to investigate, took us from being a paragon example of a well-run, community-oriented & self-sustaining PL club in days before FFP rendered that a necessity, to a shambles operating at a £20m annual loss and even 11 years in, is only back at square one (I.e. pre-Jack) in terms of the level of football we're at, without it's own training facilities and with threadbare attendances in comparison to our divisional peers. Venkys don't seem to care, other than perhaps how their dismantling of the club affects their family reputation.

At least Chansiri seems to care.

[Wheelton Blue]

Someone described the Rovers to me the other day as now being a 'pointless club'.

I pondered on it for a day or so, before realising what they meant.

There's no ambition here, other than to just about exist, to get running costs down to bare bones, to stay just above FFP, sell an odd player here and there when it hits the fan, and hopefully keep plodding along low-mid table without getting relegated.

This is what we've got to look forward to under these owners and execs.

[Mattyblue]

What ‘sense of entitlement’ is there from fans down at Ewood? I rarely hear any. I’d say most parrot the lines of Swag more than any talk of ‘we expect/are entitled to’ etc.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Mattyblue

[47er]

1 hour ago, roverblue said:

It’s just too much of a gamblers attitude for me to get behind.

Did you wilfully or carelessly misread my post? You write as if I'm urging everyone to overthrow Venkys and get rid of them.

The context of this discussion was about when/if Venkys pulled out and about whether anyone would take over or if the club would simply die.

There is no way to force Venkys out, except possibly, as I said more than a decade ago---if no-one turned up to watch.

Even then I think they might be vindictive and leave nothing but a shell.

We are on a long journey alright with them---to even more penury or worse.

The only discussion worth having is which is the more preferable----soon or years ahead.

But I won't be making the decision nor will any other fan. It'll be Venkys who decide they can't be bothered anymore.

[47er]

17 hours ago, Eddie said:

- Ultimately, if they're paying the bills,

They decide the bills to a great extent don't they? The club's funding determines the size of  bills not the other way around.

[roverblue]

56 minutes ago, K-Hod said:

They’re keeping the club going? Low bar, that. Shambles after shambles, reduction in budgets, players leaving on frees, but yeah, they’re keeping us going….

Ok where is the bar set for you in terms of Venkys losing/investing money in the club?

£20m per season isn’t enough clearly. £50m? £100m?

[Mattyblue]

Conflating two issue here. Yes the money they put in is obviously necessary and is sizeable. Nobody ever questions that, well, they question why the feck they continue to do it (though maybe not for much longer).

The issue with this lot has always been how they have managed this club for 13 years.

[K-Hod]

7 minutes ago, roverblue said:

Ok where is the bar set for you in terms of Venkys losing/investing money in the club?

£20m per season isn’t enough clearly. £50m? £100m?

Funding us so we can be competitive?
 

Not cutting the budget by 15% in the middle of the transfer window?

Not selling off our training ground for more new builds?

Not seeing key players leave on frees?

[47er]

27 minutes ago, roverblue said:

Ok where is the bar set for you in terms of Venkys losing/investing money in the club?

£20m per season isn’t enough clearly. £50m? £100m?

It all depends on what Venkys want. Clearly not promotion.

[roverblue]

Unfortunately there are two sides to football. The fan side where we all want success and the best of everything. Me included!

The business side where we have to become a sustainable club. Losing £20m or more a season is ludicrous and training ground sell offs, closing stands for low crowds are all attempts at addressing that. 

[Mattyblue]

Hoe about trying to address it by increasing revenues?

Edited September 30, 2023 by Mattyblue

[roverblue]

7 minutes ago, 47er said:

It all depends on what Venkys want. Clearly not promotion.

Unfortunately I think Waggot stated staying in the division was the target based on the budget issues. Grim

[roverblue]

1 minute ago, Mattyblue said:

Hoe about trying to address it by increasing revenues?

Absolutely a massive opportunity that someone like Waggot will never address I expect. The season tickets and marketing in particular are a joke as we all discussed earlier this summer.

I don’t think we will ever make enough from fans to break even though, not sure of the maths but £20m shortfall would be loads of tickets and merchandise. 

[Mattyblue]

Obviously not but it would sure as hell  negate the need to try and save pennies by closing the Blackburn End.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Mattyblue

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

2 hours ago, Wheelton Blue said:

Someone described the Rovers to me the other day as now being a 'pointless club'.

I pondered on it for a day or so, before realising what they meant.

There's no ambition here, other than to just about exist, to get running costs down to bare bones, to stay just above FFP, sell an odd player here and there when it hits the fan, and hopefully keep plodding along low-mid table without getting relegated.

This is what we've got to look forward to under these owners and execs.

Total and utter frustration,being held down by the throat, a club indeed going nowhere.

This could last for decades more.OH LORD!!

Edited September 30, 2023 by SIMON GARNERS 194

[roversfan99]

7 hours ago, Eddie said:

We've never had money to recirculate. On what planet do you live? Even in the Walker Trust era when we managed to sell players for high fees we were still operating at a loss.

Think about how much money we are losing enough and then try to put together a slate of transactions that balances the books.

I never said we could balance the books, running a Championship club means losses are par for the course.. But the current level of losses is down to the owners, they could be less than what they are. Employ a CEO with instruction to increase revenue streams and boost the match going fanbase. Be consistent, so dont have summers of the taps being totally off which then blocks the process of signing players before developing and profiting off them. And crucially, dont block sales of players whose contracts are expiring.

My point was, say we make 12m on Brereton and Rothwell. Reinvest 6m of that, a substantial amount considering our whole squad barely cost 10m and half of that was 4 or 5 years ago. Of course there is then scope to make money off those purchases in the future. Put 6m towards losses. So it massively helps.

[Andy]

8 hours ago, Tabula Rasa said:

I think we'd better comparing German football from the point of view of their fans' match day experience. It's so much more connected. Beer, fans mixing, pricing structure, building alocal identity. German clubs started off as, and many still are, sports clubs with football being just one community aspect.

Not sure those things combined are a good idea for far too many British football 'fans', who can't resist punching another person in the head for the grand crime of supporting another team to them.

Alcohol exacerbates the problem.

However much we progress as a society, that caveman element will still be around.

[Mike E]

8 hours ago, roverblue said:

Absolutely a massive opportunity that someone like Waggot will never address I expect. The season tickets and marketing in particular are a joke as we all discussed earlier this summer.

I don’t think we will ever make enough from fans to break even though, not sure of the maths but £20m shortfall would be loads of tickets and merchandise. 

More fans = more eyes on the ground = bigger/better sponsorship.

[chaddyrovers]

10 minutes ago, Mike E said:

More fans = more eyes on the ground = bigger/better sponsorship.

given that we were on TV about 20 times last season, I am left wondering why Rovers CEO and commercial department weren't able to secure a better commercial main sponsor for shirts and training wear plus more sponsors to advertise around Ewood Park

[broadsword]

9 hours ago, roverblue said:

Ok where is the bar set for you in terms of Venkys losing/investing money in the club?

£20m per season isn’t enough clearly. £50m? £100m?

Firstly, I wouldn't start from this point. The club basically ran itself thanks to some very decent operators. It just required a little bit of dough each year.

But no, these clueless wankers got rid of big Sam and started thinking they could run the gaff from India. I'm not going to run through the litany of arse-ups and bad appointments, but I would say the Henning berg saga was the apotheosis of their reign of terror.

The club is a total bloody basket case and they are the root cause of it. They are the reason that they must put in twenty mill a season just to stop us from going to the wall.

I don't want them to put in fifty mill a season, I just want them to FUCK OFF

Edited September 30, 2023 by broadsword

[Mike E]

2 hours ago, chaddyrovers said:

given that we were on TV about 20 times last season, I am left wondering why Rovers CEO and commercial department weren't able to secure a better commercial main sponsor for shirts and training wear plus more sponsors to advertise around Ewood Park

Because you can’t guarantee that level of TV exposure, is my guess.