Ahead of our M40 and M9 Community Day on Saturday 23rd March, volunteer Board reporter Jonathan Allsopp has penned the following piece on behalf of the club about supporter-ownership and our impact in the local community…
You can get an interesting insight into how the movers and shakers of late-stage capitalism view the hoi polloi from the advertising boards strewn along the country’s main transport arteries.
Wandering down London’s swanky King’s Road, for instance, towards Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium the advertising hoardings entice us with an assortment of the familiar status symbols of the wealthy: fast cars, expensive jewellery, designer clothes and hospitality at the rugger at Twickers.
Strolling north from Manchester city centre through the post-industrial landscape of Oldham Road towards Newton Heath the advertising execs instead choose to tempt us with ‘cheeseburger value meals’, fried chicken, stuffed crust pizzas, online gambling, televised football and the latest box-sets on which to gorge ourselves.
Active participation
The implication is clear – load up on saturated fats and sit back and watch the match (maybe with an acca or two) or binge on the latest drama. A life of passive consumption rather than active participation for the proles. But who would have thought that, in the environs of this busy thoroughfare, there are more football club owners than in Chelsea?
Much has been made of the new Manchester United co-owner and multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s upbringing in Failsworth and his boyhood support for United but these days, according to his Wikipedia page, he tends to split his time between luxury residences in Hampshire and Monaco. The types of places you’d expect to find football club owners and other ‘high net worth individuals’ doing whatever it is the super-rich do in their spare time aside from avoiding taxation.
If you plotted the residences of the owners of English football clubs on a map the M40 and M9 postcodes in North Manchester probably wouldn’t be where you’d expect to find a dense cluster of football club owners.
Foreign billionaires
Indeed, you’d need a map of the world and a magnifying glass these days to locate a whole gamut of foreign billionaires, shady off-shore tax havens and state-backed sovereign wealth funds but in England you’d probably expect some of the super-rich enclaves of London or Cheshire to feature prominently.
Perhaps SW10, for instance, a slice of Kensington and Chelsea where homes can change hands for tens of millions of pounds and a mere stone’s throw from where Ratcliffe’s INEOS petrochemicals conglomerate is headquartered.
In contrast these two Manchester postcodes – which cover a population of around 80,000 living in Moston, Newton Heath, Collyhurst, Miles Platting, Harpurhey and Blackley – contain some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England where healthy life expectancy amongst men is below 50 in some parts.
Yet, according to the latest statistics, more than one hundred people in this area own a football club – quite a concentration of powerful people you might think. And you’d be right, because these people co-own their local football club FC United of Manchester, the largest fully fan-owned football club in the country.
With this co-ownership comes the power to elect the Board (and even stand for election to the board), decide on season ticket and admission prices, attend Board meetings and shape the club’s future.
Democratic
FC United is a democratic football club run on a one-member, one-vote basis. More than six hundred co-owners – a third of eligible members – voted on a range of issues at the club’s Annual General Meeting last November.
Whilst Jim from Failsworth paid more than £1 billion for a minority stake in United that still leaves the Glazer family in overall control, you can become a co-owner of FC United for little more than £2 per month. In comparison, membership at fellow supporter-owned Lewes FC costs £50 per year for adults whilst at City of Liverpool FC it’s £5 per month, so £60 a year.
Co-ownership of FC represents remarkable value for money when you consider the level of transparency about the running of the club that’s available to members. Only this month the regular board meeting report, which documents discussions at each Board meeting and is emailed to co-owners, stretched to nearly 8,000 words.
A level of openness that would scare the living daylights out of the likes of the Glazers, Ratcliffe and Sheikh Mansour. Arguably, no group of football supporters anywhere in the UK are as well informed about the running of their club.
Co-owners
Being a co-owner of FC United offers an opportunity to break the mould and demonstrate that owning and running a football club isn’t the domain only of fabulously wealthy individuals.
We may be swimming against the tide – particularly when you see Wrexham fans ditching supporter ownership in favour of Hollywood investment, and Chorley flirting with has-been pop stars, but the club embodies a belief in returning football to the people and that supporters should participate in the running of all football clubs. At FC United we’ve taken that a stage further by insisting on 100% supporter ownership.
So far this season, more than 2,300 people have signed up to be co-owners of FC United – we’ve always had more than 2,000 members throughout our 18 and a half years as a football club – and as many of those people as possible are invited to participate in the running of a club that strives for on-pitch success and also empowers its community not only in its extensive community work but also through its academy, its role as a local employer, and through the countless volunteering opportunities it offers.
We all have skills, knowledge and experience to offer, whether it’s in laying bricks, crunching numbers, designing websites, writing content, fixing electrics or as a senior executive in a multinational corporation. At FC you’re not treated as a customer dictated to by a distant super-rich owner – instead you are a co-owner of the club who is able to fully participate in its running and has the same voting rights as everyone else at the club.
Ethos and vision
Even if football isn't really your thing, we’ve got lots of co-owners who join us because they believe in the ethos and vision of the club and want it to succeed. There’s power in a collective.
One strand of the club’s community work has seen staff and volunteers at FC United visiting local schools to talk to pupils about their role at the club as part of an initiative run by the North Manchester Business Network called ‘What’s My Job’ that’s designed, in a fun way, to challenge how children aged nine to 10 think about the world of work and their future in it. As the programme’s website explains it’s important to do this as early as possible as even at the age of seven almost half of children base their job aspirations on people they know.
And particularly in parts of North Manchester where young people are too often consigned to the low paid drudgery of working lives spent generating more wealth for the wealthy – serving over-priced coffee, packing boxes in warehouses or stacking shelves in supermarkets. We’re better than that.
In November the club’s Operations Coordinator Nigel Brookes took part in the programme and described the session at a local school as ‘thoroughly enjoyable’ with the kids making some ‘very funny suggestions’ as they attempted to guess his role at FC United. Nigel said: “It was lovely to hear some of them say they recognised me as they come to Broadhurst Park with their families, showing we are becoming further embedded locally.”
It’s a wonderful example, on a small scale, of how FC United can do its bit to make the area around us a stronger, healthier and more inclusive place to live, learn and work. You don't have to be the mega-rich CEO of a multinational petrochemicals company or a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family to co-own a Manchester football club. And we don’t have to fit the lazy, patronising stereotypes drawn up for us by the rich and powerful. For the price of half a dozen 'cheeseburger value meals' you can help shape the future of the largest 100% fan-owned football club in the country.
Community Day
FC United is delighted to be hosting an M40 and M9 Community Day on Saturday 23rd March, as part of Non League Day, where 1,000 local residents can watch our Pitching In Northern Premier League match against Basford United for free!
People who live in the M40 and M9 postcode areas will be able to collect up to four tickets per household, whilst stocks last, from the club office at Broadhurst Park during opening hours every Monday to Saturday until 5pm on Friday 22nd March. And why not sign up to become a member/co-owner of the club today?
Photo credit: Mikey | Flickr