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Good hearted proposal for fans ‘right to buy’ football clubs highlights core problem for such buy outs

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On Wednesday 18th March, Green MSP Alison Johnstone, succeeded in having a package of amendments to the Community Empowerment Bill accepted unanimously by the Local Government and Community Committee.

The purpose of the amendments proposed is to to bring in a fans’ right to buy their football clubs at any time.

The amendments were signed by Labour MSP Ken Macintosh and were backed by all members of the Local Government and Community Committee. The campaign has also been backed by Scotland’s leading anti-sectarianism charity Nil By Mouth, by Supporters Direct, and by others in the supporter ownership movement.

In the Committee meeting the Minister, Roseanna Cunningham, pledged support for a legislative approach to the problems of Scottish football, and Stage 3 is now expected to see changes and refinements to these proposals before Parliament finally approves the Bill.

This decision is overwhelmingly popular, according to the results of a Survation poll commissioned by Green MSPs, where 72% of those expressing a view supported a fans’ right to buy their local club for a market value at any point, which means regardless of whether or not it is for sale.

Alison Johnstone MSP, who lodged the amendments, said: ‘I am grateful to the members of the committee for seizing this opportunity to put fans first, and in particular to Ken Macintosh MSP, who co-signed these amendments and spoke powerfully in favour of them at Committee. We asked fans what they wanted, and they asked us for the tools to do the job and run their clubs responsibly for the long term. Today Holyrood has lived up to their aspirations.’

This is a good hearted and well intentioned proposals and, at first glance, one that addressed the obvious disjunction between the money men who see football clubs as potential cash cows to be milked and the fans who will support their clubs to the death,regardless.

It has been painful to watch what has happened to Hearts and to Rangers in this scenario and to witness the impotence of the fans without whom there would be no cows.

But there is a serious flaw in the provision of the Land Reform Act that enables and funds community buy outs; and it is hard to see how this flaw can be rectified without losing a sense of proportion in the relation of cost to benefit.

The problem is that communities are funded by a spectrum of state organisations – like the Scottish Land Fund itself and by Highland and Islands Enterprise, for example – to buy the property in question.

But they become owners with no reserves,  no development funds to hand to manage and grow the asset, not even perhaps, to keep it running as before.

This lack of reserves drives community asset-holding companies into the inevitable position of being almost wholly grant-dependent in perpetuity. This is not remotely businesslike and it is not at all sustainable. In a financial catastrophe such as the one that felled us in 2008, there is no money left over for soft funds; and community companies enter a funding environment where there are too many mendicants and not enough resources to supply them.

The finances of football clubs are something else altogether. The sums involved are huge. The risks are equally stratospheric. Even getting rid of folk – as has been the case at Rangers – can cost an awful lot of money.

Fans could possibly be assisted to buy clubs [which would not be debt-free]. But how could they then buy the players and managers they would need? Where would the security for loans come from; and in the current lending climate?

The problem here is the core problem with community buy outs of the traditional land-based kind.

With the financing of football clubs being at a stratospheric level, the prospect of clubs being taken into the community ownership of fans organisations could hardly underline more powerfully that fundamental flaw in the Land Reform Act’s conceiving of community buy outs of most kinds.

Suddenly you own an estate. What do you for money to manage it – and you have a debts to repay from financing the acquisition.

Note: The amendments are available on the Scottish Parliament website here.


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