The idea of Supporter Ownership has been thrown around since Con left. There are many positives to the supporters owning part of our club. To name but a few:
- Ensuring close links between club and supporter community
- Protecting the club from the dangers of single entity ownership
- Protecting the identity of the club (e.g. Cardiff City)
- Facilitating links between the club and the wider community
- Creation of a true community asset, a tangible part of Newcastle culture.
- Ensuring the club is around for future generations.
Goals are important. These must be reasonable and achievable. For example it would be ill advised to go out planning to own the entire club, we would be better off aiming to own part of the club (e.g Swansea City which is owned 20% by the Swans Trust).
The swans trust have worked effectively with the help of an organisation in England called Supporters Direct to position themselves and enable the purchase and maintenance of an appropriate level of ownership for the size of the club. Their aims are similar to what ours should be from the outset of any potential fan ownership group:
- To maintain a professional Football League club in Swansea
- To bring the football club closer to it’s local community
- To have an elected supporters representative on the Board of Swansea City Football Club
- To raise sufficient funds to buy a stake in the club, in pursuance of the aims above
*http://www.swanstrust.co.uk/trust-aims/
Obviously we change the name of the club and the location to suit our particulars but these are simple achievable aims.
Supporters Direct, as I have already mentioned are an organisation that helps facilitate fan ownership groups in over 20 different countries. IN the past when talking about fan ownership they have offered to fly people from the UK out to Australia to assist in the first stage of taking a part in the club, and giving us guidance on how to do this. They have assisted in getting the fans of the club to have at least one director on the board in 75 clubs in the UK and several others around the world. They would be willing to help us achieve this here.
So how do we go about getting to a point where we can own part of the club?
It starts with forming a new democratic organisation. This can take two forms, either as a Co-operative or as an Incorporated Association. The rules and constitution of the organisation would be designed to ensure that a) The organisation would aim towards owning a portion of the club, and b) failing that would use its resources to further the sport in the hunter region.
Information on these structures and how they work legally can be found here: http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/ft...ciations.page?
The biggest hurdle to any fan ownership is the license fee that the FFA may ask. This upfront amount of money would be prohibitive to the organisation of fans purchasing the club. To circumvent this issue, were the organisation to take a stake from the outset of the new ownership structure, the FFA would need to ratify and encourage the organisation and as a sign of good faith, in the benefit and security that ownership of this kind brings, gift the percentage to the fans. This gift would be a percentage based on the foreseeable capacity of ownership the organisation could handle, be it 5-50%.
Success of the new organisation would hinge on the FFA's willingness to be involved with the implementation, and their help to facilitate a broader base of ownership of the club within our community. It is important however that the independence of the organisation from the club and the FFA, and other interested parties be maintained. This requires much good will and faith from all sides.
I believe the Newcastle would fit nicely into an experiment of supporter ownership which could become the normal throughout the A-league. We have a strong, proud community, who have patriarchal links to our city and our club. This would ensure that there will always be a professional team in Newcastle, and that football in this region will always thrive.