Supporters Club and Trust bar - Saturday - please read.

[pongo88]

42 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

I thought it was tradition and an acknowledgement that when clubs fall upon hard times then it is to the supporters club that they look for help.  I don't think BCFC does an annual profit and loss account of supporters club benefits vs costs.

Bournemouth supporters rescued their club a few years back; I know somebody who was involved.  This was before the foreign money takeover.  Exeter supporters did the same and still own their club.

It's not a tradition with City. Over the years I'm sure the supporters club has given City some support but nothing that really helped in desperate days. When City was on its knees financially in the 50s it was a local businessman, Harry Dolman, who came to the rescue. The same in the 80s, when local businessmen put money into the club to stop it going out of business.  In this case supporters also bought shares but this was open to everyone not just supporters club members  

Today we have Steve Lansdown. The club hadn't exactly fallen on hard times when he arrived, but without his input we wouldn't have a new ground and the current squad. 

The suggestion that the supporters club could save City now if Steve Lansdown left, and the club was saddled with massive debts, is laughable. They might be able to afford a new portacabin, as at the Memorial Ground, but that's it. 

[Eddie Hitler]

6 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

It's not a tradition with City. Over the years I'm sure the supporters club has given City some support but nothing that really helped in desperate days. When City was on its knees financially in the 50s it was a local businessman, Harry Dolman, who came to the rescue. The same in the 80s, when local businessmen put money into the club to stop it going out of business.  In this case supporters also bought shares but this was open to everyone not just supporters club members  

Today we have Steve Lansdown. The club hadn't exactly fallen on hard times when he arrived, but without his input we wouldn't have a new ground and the current squad. 

The suggestion that the supporters club could save City now if Steve Lansdown left, and the club was saddled with massive debts, is laughable. They might be able to afford a new portacabin, as at the Memorial Ground, but that's it. 

They act as a focus for the support.  If they were sitting on a multi-million bank account that could clear club debts at a stroke then I think there would be questions asked.

As a SC member I was asked to buy shares by Scott Davidson to help support the club and did so; and then a few years later there was a rights issue and I again contributed (decent amounts both times I might add, we are not talking a few hundred quid).  Many other SC members did the same so the SC, through its members, provided significant financial support to the club twice when I was a member (I have actually lapsed - sssh! - but will rejoin).  I think that alone is worth being given the usage of a room on match days.

[phantom]

45 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

The suggestion that the supporters club could save City now if Steve Lansdown left, and the club was saddled with massive debts, is laughable. They might be able to afford a new portacabin, as at the Memorial Ground, but that's it. 

So how have other clubs managed to be succesfully taken over and run by supporters?

[pongo88]

31 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

They act as a focus for the support.  If they were sitting on a multi-million bank account that could clear club debts at a stroke then I think there would be questions asked.

As a SC member I was asked to buy shares by Scott Davidson to help support the club and did so; and then a few years later there was a rights issue and I again contributed (decent amounts both times I might add, we are not talking a few hundred quid).  Many other SC members did the same so the SC, through its members, provided significant financial support to the club twice when I was a member (I have actually lapsed - sssh! - but will rejoin).  I think that alone is worth being given the usage of a room on match days.

There are a lot of people who bought shares in the club, pre Steve Lansdown, who are not supporters club members. They were not offered their own bar as a reward.  

But, going back to my original genuine question, can anybody explain what it does that benefits the club in such a way it is given is given its own bar in return? (Buying shares doesn't count, as I've explained that this has been done by other people)

[pongo88]

6 minutes ago, phantom said:

So how have other clubs managed to be succesfully taken over and run by supporters?

Other clubs being taken over and run by supporters is not the same as City potentially being taken over by the supporters club, if City had massive debts. A £5 per year membership fee wouldn't raise much. We're talking about tens of millions of pounds, minimum! If I'm wrong, please explain how the supporters club has access to this sort of money. 

[Eddie Hitler]

17 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

There are a lot of people who bought shares in the club, pre Steve Lansdown, who are not supporters club members. They were not offered their own bar as a reward.  

But, going back to my original genuine question, can anybody explain what it does that benefits the club in such a way it is given is given its own bar in return? (Buying shares doesn't count, as I've explained that this has been done by other people)

Are there really lots of people who bought in the issue and rights issue in the 90s who weren't SC members?  You're asserting that but the mechanism of sale suggests otherwise.   It wasn't an open issue.  I was contacted about the first as a SC member and the second as an existing shareholder, which stemmed from my being a SC member.  If I was not a SC member the club would not have known to contact me and I would not have bought the shares.

8 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

Other clubs being taken over and run by supporters is not the same as City potentially being taken over by the supporters club, if City had massive debts. A £5 per year membership fee wouldn't raise much. We're talking about tens of millions of pounds, minimum! If I'm wrong, please explain how the supporters club has access to this sort of money. 

No supporters club has immediate access to this sort of money; the supporters clubs who have saved their teams did not have immediate access to this sort of money.  You're asking the wrong question.

[phantom]

1 hour ago, pongo88 said:

Other clubs being taken over and run by supporters is not the same as City potentially being taken over by the supporters club, if City had massive debts. A £5 per year membership fee wouldn't raise much. We're talking about tens of millions of pounds, minimum! If I'm wrong, please explain how the supporters club has access to this sort of money. 

Would say that it is all about having someone in place to do the work to?

A supporters club can probably be found within every club in the country, not sure that it is REALLY that big a deal?

[Super]

What time are Harry and his 50 mates turning up?

[TV Tom]

24 minutes ago, Super said:

What time are Harry and his 50 mates turning up?

We're leaving the Hartcliffe Inn at midday ready to gate crash at approx 12:15

[pongo88]

1 hour ago, Eddie Hitler said:

Are there really lots of people who bought in the issue and rights issue in the 90s who weren't SC members?  You're asserting that but the mechanism of sale suggests otherwise.   It wasn't an open issue.  I was contacted about the first as a SC member and the second as an existing shareholder, which stemmed from my being a SC member.  If I was not a SC member the club would not have known to contact me and I would not have bought the shares.

No supporters club has immediate access to this sort of money; the supporters clubs who have saved their teams did not have immediate access to this sort of money.  You're asking the wrong question.

I said there were a lot of people who bought shares pre Steve Lansdown, not specifically in the 1990s.The big input of money was in the early 1980s when the Ashton Gate 8 were sacked. I bought some shares, as did many others, though I wasn't a member of the supporters club. The supporters club then couldn't save City and if a similar situation happen now, the current supporters club couldn't either. The money involved is far too big. A good summary of the scale of the problem involved in a club going bust was written by cider head (post 15 in the link below)

On a smaller scale the same sort of thing must have been happening at Rovers in recent years. Nick Higgs was juggling the debts until he managed to find a "billionaire" to take over.  

 

http://www.otib.co.uk/index.php?/topic/150407-1982/

 

[pongo88]

52 minutes ago, phantom said:

Would say that it is all about having someone in place to do the work to?

A supporters club can probably be found within every club in the country, not sure that it is REALLY that big a deal?

I've got no issue with the supporters club. I just asked a genuine question about what it does that justifies it being given its own bar. (Can anyone tell me?) This is pertinent as the Sports Bar and concourses are very crowed, made worse by no tables and chairs in the concourses. If we were at Aston Vale the supporters club could have an entire suite without any problem. I can understand certain people being rewarded as they do a lot of unpaid work. 

[Eddie Hitler]

4 minutes ago, pongo88 said:

I said there were a lot of people who bought shares pre Steve Lansdown, not specifically in the 1990s.The big input of money was in the early 1980s when the Ashton Gate 8 were sacked. I bought some shares, as did many others, though I wasn't a member of the supporters club. The supporters club then couldn't save City and if a similar situation happen now, the current supporters club couldn't either. The money involved is far too big. A good summary of the scale of the problem involved in a club going bust was written by cider head (post 15 in the link below)

On a smaller scale the same sort of thing must have been happening at Rovers in recent years. Nick Higgs was juggling the debts until he managed to find a "billionaire" to take over.  

 

http://www.otib.co.uk/index.php?/topic/150407-1982/

 

I know what happened in 1982.

Here is what happened at Exeter in 2003.  Julian Tagg is still Chairman (he was on the telly for their FA cup game last year) and the club is still owned by the fans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/e/exeter_city/3044129.stm

Rovers under Higgs is an exception because it had all manner of external debts, pay day loans what have you.  Usually when huge debt figures are quoted, as for Bolton last year, they are only debt on a technicality.  They are the accumulated losses that the previous owner has funded by pumping cash into the club and creating debt is the most tax efficient way of doing that.  And Phil Gartside wrote off the "debt" Bolton owed him.  You don't think that consortium coming in wrote him a cheque for £120m do you?

[pongo88]

39 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

I know what happened in 1982.

Here is what happened at Exeter in 2003.  Julian Tagg is still Chairman (he was on the telly for their FA cup game last year) and the club is still owned by the fans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/e/exeter_city/3044129.stm

Rovers under Higgs is an exception because it had all manner of external debts, pay day loans what have you.  Usually when huge debt figures are quoted, as for Bolton last year, they are only debt on a technicality.  They are the accumulated losses that the previous owner has funded by pumping cash into the club and creating debt is the most tax efficient way of doing that.  And Phil Gartside wrote off the "debt" Bolton owed him.  You don't think that consortium coming in wrote him a cheque for £120m do you?

Eddie - I admire your determination to keep defending your viewpoint, but you keep going off at a tangent with unrelated examples. First it was buying shares in the 1990s and now it's Exeter City and Bolton Wanderers. 

Exeter is not an example that can be compared to City.  Exeter's first financial problem in the 80s, led to the local council buying the ground and leasing it back to the club. Then, in 2003 when the club was in the conference, the owners were arrested and the supporters trust bought the club for £20k!  I humbly suggest that if City was in trouble, Bristol City Council would not buy the ground and the club would be sold for a bit more than £20k

As for Bolton, Eddie Davies was the majority shareholder at the time it was sold last year. He wrote off the debts owed to him as that was the only way he could get rid of the club. There was also the £2m tax bill that could not be described as "a debt on a technicality". It had to be paid by the new Sports Shield Consortium headed by Dean Holdsworth. Sports Shield Consortium is not a supporters club and they need financial backing to succeed. Getting Bolton is the relatively easy bit. Finding money to keep it running might be more difficult. 

[Eddie Hitler]

My point is that supporters clubs can and do act as the focus for rescuing clubs and are worth having for that alone. I would have thought that was self-evident.

Equally self-evident is that no supporters club would seek, under ordinary conditions, to accumulate a multi million pound war chest on the off chance that they could buy the club if it failed.

So for this and that they do other things (including running this forum) such clubs are a good thing and unless you're Owen Oyston a good owner would encourage them which includes allowing them to use facilities at the ground.

[City fan 1982]

I've often thought of joining the scat , like a previous posters question  has not been answered. What does it do , is it really relevant any more ?   I'm sure they used to be involved with red and white nights years ago , I appreciate they can't save the club if it was millions in debt , I kind of feel I should join but no one has really convinced me tbh . I'm a atyeo season ticket holder , but in future they will be dolman based , will I be welcome ? Can anyone convince me ,. If they can I will dust off my wallet and join  coyr 

[pongo88]

2 hours ago, Eddie Hitler said:

My point is that supporters clubs can and do act as the focus for rescuing clubs and are worth having for that alone. I would have thought that was self-evident.

Equally self-evident is that no supporters club would seek, under ordinary conditions, to accumulate a multi million pound war chest on the off chance that they could buy the club if it failed.

So for this and that they do other things (including running this forum) such clubs are a good thing and unless you're Owen Oyston a good owner would encourage them which includes allowing them to use facilities at the ground.

I don't think we quite agree on things, but that doesn't worry me. The forum should be about an exchange of views, which is what we've had. Far too often discussions slip into a slanging match with insults. 

[Milo]

3 hours ago, pongo88 said:

I've got no issue with the supporters club. I just asked a genuine question about what it does that justifies it being given its own bar. (Can anyone tell me?) This is pertinent as the Sports Bar and concourses are very crowed, made worse by no tables and chairs in the concourses. If we were at Aston Vale the supporters club could have an entire suite without any problem. I can understand certain people being rewarded as they do a lot of unpaid work. 

Its roots go back to 1949. It funded material for the ground post-war and Harry Dolman was so grateful for the contribution he gave the Supporters Club a 100 year lease for a peppercorn £1 a season. This was removed by successive administrations who gradually put an ever-increasing emphasis on commercial revenue over community.

The reason is straight forward, and it's a commercial one. This is a group of people who collectively, whatever the weather, turn up early at Ashton Gate and spend money drinking cider. Bar takings in the Supporters Club bar are better per capita than other parts of the ground which might reflect a number of reasons (perhaps long-standing relationships based around drinking? other bars having a higher ratio of seat warmers?). By continuing to provide the space these supporters continue to spend their money; take it away and the Club risks the money being spent elsewhere. It really is as simple as the Club wanting to sell more products and seeing the commercial benefit of keeping us there.

In addition to the product sales the Supporters Club has a long history of making financial contributions including through donations, share purchase, shirt sponsorship, manpower, kitting out entirely the last SC bar, even paying rent for a few years.

Our website hopefully gives a good flavour of what we do. We have collaborated with the Club and made strong contributions towards the plans for Ashton Vale and Ashton Gate, conducting the fans survey for the former, petitioning and lobbying. Our proposals for loyalty schemes and dynamic ticketing have been accepted. “Ask the Chairman” sessions in away pubs, home bars and online have kept the lines of communication going. We commemorated the Ashton Gate Eight, launched the Hall of Fame and produced the City Til I Die book. We've organised the Atyeo statue. We pay for this forum. We play a part in fans representation at various opportunities directly and via FAN. Communication is ongoing with people at the Club several times a week, often several times daily when issues arise as they have over the last couple of days on the ticketing fee issue. We can represent supporters through the media, with representatives this week on Points West and Radio Bristol as an example. Since setting up the Trust we have recorded over 12,600 voluntary man-hours in our accounts, volunteer time given by supporters holding down paid work at the same time (only one board member is retired).

In the coming months there will be a stadium suited for 27,000 with facilities available for all. There are plans for an Atyeo bar and a return to the previous SC bar that we'll be making both a financial and time commitment towards producing. While spaces are limited during the development, the commercial reason for making a space available last season and now is that it keeps us going as a drinking group in the ground, long hours before kick-off, ready to grow and keep drinking in our new space when its ready.

[Robbored]

Well said Milo.

Hopefully some of the more SC&T critical posters on here will now appreciate what you all do.

[TV Tom]

32 minutes ago, Robbored said:

Well said Milo.

Hopefully some of the more SC&T critical posters on here will now appreciate what you all do.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Robbored]

4 minutes ago, harrys said:

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Don't you think that's done before?   

You must try to be more original.

[TV Tom]

I'm not on here enough to notice, it must be the effect you have on people 

[Dollymarie]

Bumping this in case anyone hasn't seen it and needs to ahead of tomorrow!

Wahey! TOMORROW!!!