bmck 117 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 I have no idea where I would get the �£600. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frankie 8,230 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 I have no idea where I would get the �£600. Just sell more of your fine body at Anderston Quay? :fish: 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
maineflyer 0 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 What's the problem with asking them? Nobody is losing out if they don't take up the offer. No problem at all as far as I'm concerned. Expecting them to pay it is another thing. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frankie 8,230 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 No problem at all as far as I'm concerned. Expecting them to pay it is another thing. I see it as a positive circle - get credible people heading it and get people paying subs; get people paying subs and get more business investment. Someone needs to take the initiative and if its the fans, then I'm all for it. The problem is a smaller scale version of this has already been attempted (under different circumstances granted) and hasn't been as successful as any of us would have hoped. I suppose Gersave could be amended/repackaged as a socios scheme but that in itself will cost tens of thousands of pounds - money the Trust doesn't have. In general don't mind paying for improved representation and an improved club but until I know the meat on the bones, the cobwebs stay in my wallet. Moreover, I see myself as reasonably interested spectator reasonably well versed in the politics. Copland Joe on the other hand, will need more than some faceless online persona to persuade him to part with his cash. McColl (or the like) may provide the investment, who provides the much-needed figurehead? And how do the Trust reach the previously tough (impossible?) to reach offline, apathetic casual fan? These are the toughest questions and deflections about negative media coverage won't answer them. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmck 117 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 Just sell more of your fine body at Anderston Quay? :fish: Have you been talking to Pauline again? She's a big fan of this notion, she thinks I could be a good earner. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calscot 0 Posted March 31, 2010 Author Share Posted March 31, 2010 (edited) There were 200,000 fans who spent an average of �£200 on a night out in Manchester. Maybe we have to ask what's more important - getting bevvied and watching your team in a European final, or saving your club from being squeezed by the bank, possibly resulting in domestic famine and European obscurity? If all of them and an other 100k who watched it on the telly put in �£100 each then we'd be sorted. I think what the RST have to look at is what is the best scenario of numbers of subscribers and the amount they put in, for the project to be a success. Basically it seems we need say in the region �£30M. So you could try and get 3M people to put in a tenner or 3 people putting in �£10M, or something in between. The amount is governed by the number of people and the number of people is influenced by the affordability of the amount. �£1500 over five years from 20k people doesn't seem the most outlandish but what do people think would work better? �£750 from 40k? �£3000 from 10k? What exactly is the sweet-spot? I can see where the RST are coming from - but whether it will work is anyone's guess. If we want fan ownership, then this is the time as it is likely it will never be cheaper. Before DA the price would have been treble that. I can also see the point of the �£600 up front as that would give a down payment of �£12M - perhaps to buy off the majority of SDM's shares and cut the debt slightly. The monthly payment could be the paying off of the debt over 5 years at 3.6M per year plus say 1M from the P&L account. It just needs a sugar daddy to underwrite the share issue in case the uptake doesn't reach expectations and also as a guarantor to the loan - or perhaps transfer the loan to themselves in exchange them for shares which are then sold at face value every month to the fans with the monthly payment. I think the problem is that who would be willing to risk their money to back the scheme, what's in it for them and what happens to them if the scheme fails? I suppose a sugar Daddy's absolute worse case scenario is that he ends up owning the club al la SDM - or King or Ellis... Edited March 31, 2010 by calscot 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frankie 8,230 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 I actually think 20,000 people at �£1500 is achievable given the right plan and the right figurehead. The problem for me is maximising initial take-up and keeping people interested after 5 years. The initial drip-drip has to be turned into a flow which doesn't run dry. I don't mind different levels of membership either if that helps - for example I don't feel any less of a fan because I sit in a different area of the stadium from someone else. As long as the rules are flexible enough not to allow wealthy persons to be overly influential. What we need is a proper debate on the issue and to do that we need to see more than the titbits offered so far. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
maineflyer 0 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 I see it as a positive circle - get credible people heading it and get people paying subs; get people paying subs and get more business investment. Someone needs to take the initiative and if its the fans, then I'm all for it. The problem is a smaller scale version of this has already been attempted (under different circumstances granted) and hasn't been as successful as any of us would have hoped. I suppose Gersave could be amended/repackaged as a socios scheme but that in itself will cost tens of thousands of pounds - money the Trust doesn't have. In general don't mind paying for improved representation and an improved club but until I know the meat on the bones, the cobwebs stay in my wallet. Moreover, I see myself as reasonably interested spectator reasonably well versed in the politics. Copland Joe on the other hand, will need more than some faceless online persona to persuade him to part with his cash. McColl (or the like) may provide the investment, who provides the much-needed figurehead? And how do the Trust reach the previously tough (impossible?) to reach offline, apathetic casual fan? These are the toughest questions and deflections about negative media coverage won't answer them. When I said there's a problem expecting people to pay this sort of money, I meant expecting enough of them to participate in order to raise �£30m; in other words, basing the entire scheme upon that expectation. I don't believe that sort of figure is reasonable. I've no doubt some people will leap at the chance, I might do it myself if the detail and the people responsible were credible, which is not currently the case. However, the starting point has to be fundamentally believable and this won't about by multiplying two numbers and coming up with the current debt. The rST suggests a scheme involving 20,000 supporters - yet the RST membership isn't even 10% of this so who exactly do they derive their mandate from? What, for example, will this RST scheme do to stop the debt increasing year by year? How will it generate the funds required to deliver the improvement you mention? Who will run the club and who will appoint them? If the RST want support, they need to get beyond this bollocks of announcing half-baked "plans" that no one can possibly buy into. I'd like to see the mechanics of fan ownership debated and presented before talking to possible investors or underwriters. Let's see what we're being invited to buy into. Let's gauge the level of support for such a scheme before we start talking to newspapers. The RST first needs to sell itself in order to create a credible level of respresentation, then it needs to engage in dialogue with those members, and only then should it be talking to third parties. Either that or it should step aside and another supporter organisation should be formed to address this project - because, as things stand, this will never get off the ground. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
calscot 0 Posted March 31, 2010 Author Share Posted March 31, 2010 Perhaps the ideal would be to go for a 50/50 model with the "sugar daddy". 20,000 people paying �£150 then �£10 a year for 5 years seems very doable for raising �£15M. �£3M up front and 2.4M per year to pay off debt. If a sugar daddy could underwrite it and match it himself, making �£6M up front and 4.8M a year to pay of the debt. That should make owning half of Rangers pretty affordable for a sugar daddy and the fans. I'd go for that. Giving 6M to SDM for his shares, then adding the usual 1M payment towards the debt plus interest from the Rangers accounts would mean the debt would be paid off in 5 years at 5.8M per year plus interest, which should satisfy the bank if it is guaranteed by the businessman. Shame it's unlikely we could get 40k doing that - full fan ownership and debt free in 5 years... 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny 0 Posted March 31, 2010 Share Posted March 31, 2010 No, I wouldn't support anything which had the RST involved. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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