Bahrain?

[nice one rovers]

News on BBC says that Yorkshires favourite team are due to be bought out by a company in Bahrain. Bahrain? Sounds even seedier than Bates owning them.

Can we now chant "YORKSHIRE, YORKSHIRE,YORKSHIRE' when we play them?

[Jim Dobbin]

Bahrain bankers, loaded. Kuwaiti's and Qatar businessmen looking at Barnsley as well.

[RedJ]

#one team from Yorkshire, there's only one team from Yorkshire#

[Chris Black come back]

They can keep their money. Would much rather have JR and KM2 than load of foreign money pouring in with god knows what intentions. We are worth much more than being some foreigners play thing (and that includes folk from Driffield).

[MrFrost]

I don't know. That is the way football as a whole is going. Foreign investment. We could be left behind.

[Rupee92]

Surprised we haven't been the subject of a takeover bid, what with a local business man valuing us at £0.00... 

[Jim Dobbin]

It could go different ways with those teams, you see whats happening at Forest and then whats happening at Watford.

[Rupee92]

It could go different ways with those teams, you see whats happening at Forest and then whats happening at Watford.

Wouldn't be the case if the 'Fit And Proper Persons Test' actually worked... Even Chainrai is probably going to be alllowed to own pompey again ffs!

[Chris Black come back]

Aside from having your heritage, culture and history diluted (look at Cardiff City for salutory example) for all but a very few clubs this investment is absolute madness. Look at it this way, Arab investor comes in to club, injects xx millions and propels you towards Premier League. Even with wealth of TV money you are still going to be hugely dependant on said benefactor to keep on covering the huge gaps each season. If benefactor leaves/dies/loses interest/gets deposed then the club is saddled with MASSIVE financial commitments without any income base to fund them. Chelsea and Man City potentially have a chance given they have expanded their commercial reach with Champions League and Premier League victories, but I doubt that Forest or even Leeds could survive such a scenario given they are simply not going to get anywhere near winning either of them. Absolute madness and completely unsustainable. Read David Conn in Guardian about sanity of German model - which usually delivery at least Champions League semi-finalist most year.

[RedJ]

Leeds fans should be very wary of that kind of thing, what with Ridsdale's doings..

[Chris Black come back]

Ridsdale, Bates and now the Bahrainis! Brilliant!

[Mr1Croft]

I don't know. That is the way football as a whole is going. Foreign investment. We could be left behind.

I highly doubt that, but you do highlight a significant point in the wealth and power of football. Too many clubs (Chelsea, Man City, QPR, Leicester and Watford to name a few) are all jumping on board of this idea of wealth equating to success and power. Fans (like them such as Cardiff) will sacrifice almost anything for success, look at our club and how we abandoned our typical stance and morals on being a small club doing things differently to what happened last season when we sacrificed these for the advantage of having the likes of Diouf and others at our club, and that is no different to Cardiff abandoning their history to play in red because they believe it will help them become more successful and this is where foreign investment comes into play.


The problem is, should the likes of Abromovich or Shiek Mansour be allowed to own football clubs? What precautions are in place to ensure that these people will not only look after the club but to uphold them at the centre of the community. The problem is there isn't one and that is why Supporters Direct is campaigning for a Fit and Proper Person's test to be introduced with a new licensing system that is more stricter and stops clubs gambling everything and pouring money into the club, hoping for success.


To get a better idea of how many clubs do this you only have to look at the Championship, Norwich are the first club in over 10 years to gain promotion while having a wage bill smaller than the club's turnover. That means every other club has spent more money than it makes solely on players wages. But when you look at the amount of money in the TV you can see that if you do get promoted it will be worth it.


Look at the table on how the TV money from the Premier League is distributed:





Wolves only received £11 Million less than the team than won the Premier League despite being relegated and will be subject to 4 years of parachute payments.


Teams like Bolton, Derby, Hull Birmingham and Blackpool in recent years have been relegated with £40 Million in TV income and will receive their parachute payments of £48 Million in 4 years . So that means if a team has one season in the Premier League, get relegated and then 4 in the Championship you will receive at least £88 million in that period. (Anyone note how Reading were promoted the year their parachute payment was agreed to stop?) That is why so many clubs from the Championship dream of this success, because the benefits are huge.


So many clubs in the bottom end of the PL also require these huge amounts of money (of which a lot comes from overseas) to survive, whereas Man City's wage bill will be nearly 4 times bigger than the TV income, in 2010/11 they were the only team to have a higher wage bill (£174 Million) than their turnover (£153 Million) despite not having the highest wage bill in the League (Chelsea whose wage bill was £190 Million, compared to their turnover of £220 Million).


The problem with foreign investment is that they are pouring money into the PL and European clubs via owning clubs, TV rights, media rights etc., but more and more clubs such as Anzhi and Shanghai are becoming incredibly richer and attracting some of the biggest names in football. Sooner or later the clubs in the Middle East and Asia will be as big as Europe and challenging for the title as footballing continent. When this situation arises the Premier League TV rights from overseas will be less appealing for the Foreign Investment, they would rather invest in there own region. The same will be said for the owners, they will all soon disperse into the rise of the east, and British TV companies such as Sky (and now BT) will be paying over the odds to get the rights to these new foreign leagues. A new body will be made to take over UEFA as European clubs will be wanting to play these new Asian clubs, this new body of Eurasia will form its own version of the Champions League and when the football clubs give this body consent to be the governing body UEFA and its financial fair play rule will disappear leaving clubs to do as they please once again.


The only things standing in it's way is the German Bundesliga, which imposes a model of Supporters Ownership of at least 50% +1 owned by the fans. They have a licensing system in place and clubs who do not meet the requirements and spend more than they earn are punished and can be declined from playing in the Bundesliga.


When you think about the state some of the clubs are in across the country and the wider world we do really appreciate how good things are at DRFC, we may be small and we may not be successful but we have no debts and our future looks a lot brighter than most clubs whose futures will be in jeopardy from the wealthy foreign benefactor model.

[RedJ]

Question Lee (purely based on your hypothetical (although I'm not writing it off as you probably know more than me) situation) - do you think that the Club World Championship or whatever it is these days will become more of a serious thing and/or adopt a change in format if these other clubs do rise to prominence?

[nice one rovers]

Ridsdale, Bates and now the Bahrainis! Brilliant!

I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't Bates selling it to himself under ANOTHER company name , He just springs fictitious companies up at will.

[eastender]

Man city £60m
Wolves  £39m

That,s £21m not £11m difference between top  and bottom. 

[Mr1Croft]

RedJ - Perhaps, it will all depend on the rise of the economics in the South of America; the likes of Brazil have fast growing economies and if this results in the same interest in football as it has  in the middle east then we will be looking at the same challenge with South America as we face with Asia which means much richer competition, even with the likes of Africa and Australasia, and North America with poor football clubs because they have either a poor economy or a more appealing national sport then the World Club Cup will still be more appealing and if it is more of a level playing field than I see no reason why it won't take the same format as the Champions League or the World Cup with more teams entering for the title as Champions of the World.



Eastender - On my notes (This is the topic on which I am basing my politics dissertation) I have written down £21 Million as the difference but for some reason I have typed £11 Million 

[silent majority]

Ridsdale, Bates and now the Bahrainis! Brilliant!

I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't Bates selling it to himself under ANOTHER company name , He just springs fictitious companies up at will.

No it's not, that I can guarantee. However there's a long way to go before any of this becomes reality, if it ever does. I sat and had breakfast before our conference in June with a couple of members of LUST (Leeds Supporters Trust) who gave me the long and the short of all this, there's a whole lot more to come. But I can understand your premise, the sooner he does go the better though!

[Chris Black come back]

No, no! Bates must stay!

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Whether we like it or not it seems our beautiful game has turned in to a game of Monopoly.

If we were on the verge of being taken over by some reputedly multi billionaire or consortium, with promises of taking us to places we've never been, how may would object and how many would come out of the woodwork to show their support?

It's a moral dilemma but I for one would feel uncomfortable if the club grows disproportionately to the number of fans that support it.  Such growth can only continue to pay disproportionate wages to average players and that's when fans get left behind and surely, it's not sustainable?

But, what's the worse thing that can happen? We've seen clubs fall and rise with relatively short lived visits to the lower leagues, so even given Rangers and Portsmouth's current plight the risks seem to be worth it??

Now it would be funny if the Bahrain owners prefer their team to play in red shirts and black shorts !!

 

[Mr1Croft]

Whether we like it or not it seems our beautiful game has turned in to a game of Monopoly.

If we were on the verge of being taken over by some reputedly multi billionaire or consortium, with promises of taking us to places we've never been, how may would object and how many would come out of the woodwork to show their support?

It's a moral dilemma but I for one would feel uncomfortable if the club grows disproportionately to the number of fans that support it.  Such growth can only continue to pay disproportionate wages to average players and that's when fans get left behind and surely, it's not sustainable?

But, what's the worse thing that can happen? We've seen clubs fall and rise with relatively short lived visits to the lower leagues, so even given Rangers and Portsmouth's current plight the risks seem to be worth it??

Now it would be funny if the Bahrain owners prefer their team to play in red shirts and black shorts !!

You can compare this scenario to the Credit Crunch, the clubs are the banks and the government is the FA, PL and FL as the governing body (and the Scottish equivalent for Rangers) the clubs get too big and they do so because they believe that they are too big to go bust, what we have seen with Rangers and Portsmouth is that if you are successful and you do get into financial bother you will be rescued, you may suffer slightly along the way but the governing bodies (in particular the Premier League) will not see you go under because if a Premiership football club goes bust and into liquidation it devalues the league, notice how Luton and Gretna were both respectively pushed along down the leagues quietly to allow them to die (luckily Luton survived) once they were clear of the (S)PL and wouldn't be taken into consideration by potential sponsors/broadcasting companies.


But you do raise a valid point, prior to this summer compare our last 5 seasons to Portsmouth; we won promotion; we conserved, we didn't spend big and we went down without a vast array of debts, we were described as doing things the 'right way'. Portsmouth won the FA cup, entered Europe, spent more on their wages than they actually had and suffered double relegation. But what I find interesting is that both clubs were in a similar situation this summer regarding transfer, needing to move big stars on before getting players in (in fact Pompey were offering higher wages even after what has happened).


But if you look at the bigger picture our future is safe while Pompey's is in doubt...

[Sammy Chung was King]

There's a few 'Big teams' over the next few years will go to the wall,when foreign owners realise there's not loads of profit involved with the majority of club's,and lose interest,Arsenal are going to be seen as a very forward thinking football club,the way they do things financially,i don't want foreign owners coming in,more money or not,i'm quite happy us trying to steadily rebuild the club up to where we can challenge for a place back in the Championship,and who know's in the future a club that makes a profit!!

[jmt]

Hmmmm...... Two teams have high profile televised games and win, two teams who also have owners wanting out.

[Standanista]

With their history, I'd say Leeds are easily as big a global brand, potentially, as Man City, and I think Arab investment would be a good thing for them as a club, certainly better than Bates or Risdale.  I wouldn't say the same about Barnsley, who most Premier League fans in Malaysia etc won't have heard of, but Leeds, for sure.

[Jim Dobbin]

It seems foreign investors are targetting Championship clubs so that they can pour £10 million+ into them and try and get the £80/£90 million Premiership jackpot. From what l've read and what was on the radio Barnsley are making a profit and debt free, so they will be cheaper to purchase. Leeds made a £4 million profit last year, mainly down to player sales so again a fairly cheap buy. A lot of Championship clubs are in debt so obviously it costs a lot more to purchase.

The worry would be what happens when these investors get bored and if their plans for the promised land fails?