Membership Club
Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 10:39 pm
I didn't know where else to write this:
This is just an idea at the moment so bare with me!
We are all obviously football fans and for whatever reason our heart lays in Adelaide.
We all have ideas, thoughts and opinions on what our club should be like and how it should operate.
Sadly almost all of us aren't able to action any of these ideas, thought and opinions.
Of late we have witnessed the emergence of a new footballing super power, the democratically run, fan owned Bundesliga clubs.
Having fans owning and running football clubs seems to offer these clubs a stable financial base for clubs to work with and due to the funds coming from the fans the club must be responsible and pragmatic with those funds. Splashing cash out on big players to expect immediate success is IMO a disaster waiting to happen every time it takes place, and as we have seen with the likes of Chelsea and Man City clubs might even have a fairly successful season or miss out on a trophy by a tiny margin only to see their coach sacked as a result of it.
I also have experience in working with a membership club as I am currently employed at Lord’s Cricket Ground by the Marylebone Cricket Club which is one of the oldest membership clubs in the world. To see the results of over 226 years of stability that memberships bring at the ground is staggering. The ground is the largest in the UK, Its facilities are second in every aspect to no one, It owns almost the entire area the Cricket ground is based on outright meaning the club has a property portfolio in the hundreds of millions of pounds if it chose to sell Lord’s in the future (obviously something they would never do) and probably most impressive is the future plans of redevelopment the club has
http://www.lords.org/news/2013/may/mcc- ... asterplan/
The club hopes to redevelop the ground in a £200m, 13 year plan that it will fund itself entirely. Meaning if things change and money at one point becomes tighter they are under no pressure to go ahead with other stages of the redevelopment till the fund become available again. The freedom that offers the club cannot by under stated. While we see Adelaide United currently under the perils of a dodgie Government deal with the Adelaide Entertainment Centre which is now significantly increasing the rental costs for match days at the club.
In Adelaide or Australia for that matter no such professional club exists I put it to you the Adelaide United fans that we start one here. I know the club themselves have attempted to start one with the Adelaide United Membership Committee but due to whatever reasons this certainly isn’t happening even though many of us have put in money to it over the past few seasons.
So I put it to us why can’t we start a membership club ourselves? Build up slowly then once we have enough capital to make a play for a seat on the board of the club?
It may not be an entirely democratic board but it will give us fans a voice on the board and our thoughts and feelings will be taken into account.
I am quite often reading about people asking for change especially when it comes to Adelaide and Football, we’re often asking for help and change in Government, the running of clubs or on a public level. This as I see it is the best way for change. We will control our destiny just like how the MCC are in control of theirs.
I ask this with most Financial members feeling their $65 that was going to the club seemingly wasted on a couple of stickers and a stubble holder why do we put that money together and slowly work towards funding a committee of our own? Obviously I’m not talking about 10 people getting less then $1,000 together and going to the club, but if we started with 10 people getting $650 together it is a good amount of money to get the ball rolling.
Is this something people would be interested in starting?
I also have a few ideas/questions of which direction we could take.
• Once the ball is rolling would continuing to fund for a seat at the AU board be best or looking to fund a local club and start that as a membership run club first be an option? This could possibly mean if we had a connection with both AU and the local club, the local club could work at becoming a feeder club to AU?
• What would be a priority for the membership club to focus on? Youth? Community? High level success?
• Would sponsorship or allowing businesses on board change the direction of the club?
I have many other thoughts and ideas but I’m keen to see how interested others are on this first.
Cheers
This is just an idea at the moment so bare with me!
We are all obviously football fans and for whatever reason our heart lays in Adelaide.
We all have ideas, thoughts and opinions on what our club should be like and how it should operate.
Sadly almost all of us aren't able to action any of these ideas, thought and opinions.
Of late we have witnessed the emergence of a new footballing super power, the democratically run, fan owned Bundesliga clubs.
Having fans owning and running football clubs seems to offer these clubs a stable financial base for clubs to work with and due to the funds coming from the fans the club must be responsible and pragmatic with those funds. Splashing cash out on big players to expect immediate success is IMO a disaster waiting to happen every time it takes place, and as we have seen with the likes of Chelsea and Man City clubs might even have a fairly successful season or miss out on a trophy by a tiny margin only to see their coach sacked as a result of it.
I also have experience in working with a membership club as I am currently employed at Lord’s Cricket Ground by the Marylebone Cricket Club which is one of the oldest membership clubs in the world. To see the results of over 226 years of stability that memberships bring at the ground is staggering. The ground is the largest in the UK, Its facilities are second in every aspect to no one, It owns almost the entire area the Cricket ground is based on outright meaning the club has a property portfolio in the hundreds of millions of pounds if it chose to sell Lord’s in the future (obviously something they would never do) and probably most impressive is the future plans of redevelopment the club has
http://www.lords.org/news/2013/may/mcc- ... asterplan/
The club hopes to redevelop the ground in a £200m, 13 year plan that it will fund itself entirely. Meaning if things change and money at one point becomes tighter they are under no pressure to go ahead with other stages of the redevelopment till the fund become available again. The freedom that offers the club cannot by under stated. While we see Adelaide United currently under the perils of a dodgie Government deal with the Adelaide Entertainment Centre which is now significantly increasing the rental costs for match days at the club.
In Adelaide or Australia for that matter no such professional club exists I put it to you the Adelaide United fans that we start one here. I know the club themselves have attempted to start one with the Adelaide United Membership Committee but due to whatever reasons this certainly isn’t happening even though many of us have put in money to it over the past few seasons.
So I put it to us why can’t we start a membership club ourselves? Build up slowly then once we have enough capital to make a play for a seat on the board of the club?
It may not be an entirely democratic board but it will give us fans a voice on the board and our thoughts and feelings will be taken into account.
I am quite often reading about people asking for change especially when it comes to Adelaide and Football, we’re often asking for help and change in Government, the running of clubs or on a public level. This as I see it is the best way for change. We will control our destiny just like how the MCC are in control of theirs.
I ask this with most Financial members feeling their $65 that was going to the club seemingly wasted on a couple of stickers and a stubble holder why do we put that money together and slowly work towards funding a committee of our own? Obviously I’m not talking about 10 people getting less then $1,000 together and going to the club, but if we started with 10 people getting $650 together it is a good amount of money to get the ball rolling.
Is this something people would be interested in starting?
I also have a few ideas/questions of which direction we could take.
• Once the ball is rolling would continuing to fund for a seat at the AU board be best or looking to fund a local club and start that as a membership run club first be an option? This could possibly mean if we had a connection with both AU and the local club, the local club could work at becoming a feeder club to AU?
• What would be a priority for the membership club to focus on? Youth? Community? High level success?
• Would sponsorship or allowing businesses on board change the direction of the club?
I have many other thoughts and ideas but I’m keen to see how interested others are on this first.
Cheers