Brisbane Roar chairman Chris Fong wants to give supporters a stake in the defending A-League champion, with a plan to sell 30 per cent of the club to fans within two years.
With a 30 per cent sale of Melbourne Victory ratified this week to existing shareholders – chairman Anthony Di Pietro and director Mario Biasin – Fong's preferred model would see fans' groups acquire a stake in Brisbane Roar.
Brisbane has won three of the past four A-league championships but has suffered a horror start to the 2014-2015 season with four straight losses.
"We need to get the fan base up a little bit over the next couple of years and then I would like to see us make 30 per cent of the club available for supporters," said Fong.
"The plan would be to reinvest that money directly back into the club and the team to help us grow and provide greater sustainability.
"As a club, we are not looking to make money – though that would be nice – but we, as owners, all want to be in a position where we can break even at some stage.
"It's about ploughing it back into the club and we are determined to try and give supporters a stake."
Under the Indonesian-based Bakrie Group, which bought the club 21 months ago, memberships have jumped from 1800 to more than 11,000.
"That's a remarkable increase," said Fong. "Back then we had a training facility [Ballymore], which was the home of rugby union and now we have just moved into our own facility in the centre of town.
"The last couple of years we have lost about $2 million a year, but that's down to around $1.5 million now.
"We have a strong commercial approach and are treating it as a business and are starting to see the rewards from that. There's a passion and there's a love there for Brisbane and what we are doing."
With a turnover in the region of $14 million, Roar’s bite into the balance sheet of the Bakrie Group conglomerate is minor.
But the multi-billion-dollar mining-to-telecoms group is not immune from the squalls of the global markets and is currently negotiating with creditors over $8 billion in debts.
Its core coal business has taken a dive with global prices plunging from a high of $195 a tonne to just $65.
"Like most A-League owners we are also under pressure," added Fong. "When coal prices drop by more than 50 per cent in five years or so there is not much spare cash to go around."
The group has also divested itself of its interests in Uruguay, where it had a football school, as well as selling off Belgium second-tier club CS Vise.
"We have been realigning our strategies to strengthen what we have with Brisbane and also in Indonesia [with Arema Cronus]," added Fong.
"We have close ties with [Indonesian billionaire] Erik Thohir [who has a 70 per cent stake in Inter Milan] and we are looking at linking things up and sharing resources and possibly players."
Those links are set to include taking a percentage of the ownership of the Nerazzurri.
Fong also declared that Roar would look offshore for its next head coach as incumbent Mike Mulvey feels the heat from its poor start.
"It’s a path we are heading down. It's going to happen one day and we'll probably do it … when that will be, in the next couple of years or not, I am not sure.
"But there is the same pool of coaches in Australia and there's a lot of talent we want to tap into in Europe and we have a lot of contacts there.
"Mike has come in and done all right in the last season and a half and led us to the premiership and championship last season – you can’t take credit away from that.
"He might still be here in five years - but eventually we'll see a coach from Europe.
"You have clubs with long-standing development programs there and the way to go for us to go is to develop young players and sell them."
