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Fan Ownership! - Hearts And Us


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Gordon Waddell in the Sunday Mail compares Hearts and us.

 

WITH the right kind of leadership and governance, Rangers could have been golden by now. Miles back down the road.

 

Instead their fans have had to watch a seemingly endless line of charlatans, con-artists, chancers and liars pass through their club.

 

It’s been like some kind of anti-Disney parade, as they looked to see what they could make from it, not what they could make of it.

 

Which is why they should be looking on with interest at where Hearts are headed this morning. See what they COULD have had.

 

Day one of the draw-down on the direct debits of their membership scheme. The cornerstone of their recovery.

 

More than 7000 people signed up and counting.

 

Yes, the Foundation of Hearts are still only preferred bidders for their stricken club.

 

Yes, they’ll be hostages to fate as long as uncertainty surrounds the insolvency of UBIG 1700 miles east of them.

 

But it’s what they’re trying to create that’s so important. They’re not the first – but they’ll be the biggest fan-owned club yet. And if it works for them? They could be the template for everyone.

 

Fan-owned and controlled, sustainable wage bill, sensible leadership with a presentable public face, people with some corporate smarts and business acumen behind the scenes.

 

They’re all eminently achievable for a club of Hearts’ size.

 

People say fan ownership can’t be trusted – but why not?

 

In a crowd of 10,000 you’ll have everyone from brain surgeons to brickies, from lords to layabouts. If you can discern between them.

 

They’ll all be as diehard as each other so why not amalgamate the expertise in your stands to help make it work?

 

Look at the way Ian Murray has steered the Foundation of Hearts so far. He hasn’t put a foot wrong.

 

He’s a compelling speaker, who talks the same language as the fans – in a literal non-Lithuanian sense as well as figuratively.

 

He’s that rare breed who’s an MP and yet still has some moral fibre. It’s all there for Hearts if they can just get through administration.

 

They’d have the stadium and have already done the hard work getting their wage bill down from the ludicrous excesses of their bampot despot.

 

They are also shaking off the shackles as well – last weekend their PR staff brought in players for all arms of the media in the wake of their win over Aberdeen, something they hadn’t been allowed to do in five years.

 

They already have one of the best family-oriented community trusts in the country in Big Hearts, an independent charity arm with a fine record of engagement.

 

And if they can get 10,000 people paying a membership of £100 a year, that’s a million quid right there as your bank of last resort.

 

The foundations are there. After that, you just need to make sure what goes out never exceeds what comes in.

 

To be honest, they’ve already got a decent model to follow when it comes to the transition from an egomaniacal, overspending benefactor into fan ownership.

 

It’s exactly 18 months since I wrote about the Well Society.

 

The membership collective charged with proving they had what it took to inherit John Boyle’s 73 per cent stake in Motherwell and make it work for the community as a whole.

 

They were given targets, milestones they had to meet in a five-year plan to prove themselves viable – and so far so good.

 

They met their first funding target to get half the shares, two members were co-opted onto the club board – although to be fair, every current director at the club is also a member of the Society.

 

Now they’re a third of the way down the road to meeting their next target of raising £1.5m.

 

They have 1250 members around a third of their core support so it’s a work in progress.

 

But if and when they get there, they will inherit a club that’s already a model of good governance with no bank debt and no facility for it either. Which is the way it should be for everyone.

 

The club makes a profit, their PR is peerless, they have a sharp chief exec and directors whose CVs wouldn’t look out of place in any big business boardroom.

 

All from one of the smallest fan bases in the top division.

 

Now multiply that by three or four for Hearts and tell me it’s not sustainable.

 

Then multiply THAT by another four or five for Rangers and tell me they don’t have the money, the manpower and the motive to make a similar scheme work?

 

Of course they do. But has their chance gone?

 

Clubs like Hearts, Dunfermline and Motherwell saw an opportunity for a fresh start, a new baseline borne from their crises.

 

The problem with Rangers, sadly, is that they WERE the opportunity.

 

And look around their boardroom at what it got them.

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