A rare voice of reason, I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing the obvious flaws in the current situation and people's frenzy. I see the protesting fanbase is generally split in two camps:
a) A benevolent billionaire to take over the Glazers and make us the highest spending club in the world. This implies either the new owner would pump their own money into the club, beyond the price of acquiring it, which I imagine fans won't be happy with a leveraged buy-out, like the Glazers did, or they don't take dividends, which is the other huge gripe with the current owners. It just begs the question, why would any billionaire spend £4-5bn of their money in buying a huge asset that won't make them any money unless they decide to sell it? Some would say "for the brand power and recognition" and I would answer that if a person is able to spend £4bn on a football club, they have enough power. The only other legitimate reason I could think of is to legitimise their business and persona. Like a Saudi crown prince, Chinese tycoon or some ex-USSR fossil fuels magnate.
b) The 50%+1 ownership model where the club would be "owned" by its supporters. I think people haven't really thought about this one at all. First of all, in order for the ownership to change from Glazers to XXXXX amount of supporters, the latter need to come up with the money to buy the 50%+1 share off the Glazer family and partners. I really, really, really doubt people could come up with that kind of money. Let's make a mental math exercise:
- Let's say 50% of the club are currently worth £2bn
- Let's assume willing supporters organise and are willing to attempt buying off that 50% share and the total amount of those is 100,000 (this is being very, very, very optimistic)
- 2,000,000,000 divided by 100,000 = £20,000 per supporter
I don't know about other people but I believe saying that a 100k supporters would come out with £20k each to basically donate so that "the people" could own the club is.....naive, to put it nicely.
But ok, let's assume even that actually happens. What then? The club is 50%+1 owned by the supporters. That means club management need to be elected on mandates. So, we enter the world of
politics, populism, promises and consequences beyond the end of the current mandate. I urge people to read more on the reasons why Real Madrid and Barcelona are in dire financial state right now. It has a lot to do with the key words I underlined in the previous sentence.
Then some point to the German ownership model and more specifically to Bayern Munchen. Again, I suggest people do some reading on the topic and also understand that such a model exists in specific circumstances where it is the norm with very few exceptions (Bayern themselves can be counted as exception, RB Leipzig are another one) and to even consider it possible in the UK, it would mean ALL clubs must transition to a 50%+1 ownership model. I don't want to say that's impossible but it's damn close to it.
So, what does that leave us with? Violent, angry and loud protesters who are such a small fraction of the club's fanbase that if they weren't violent nobody would even notice them. Other are Social Media heroes who post angry messages with hashtags and support to ideas they generally do not understand.
I believe the owners, the staff, the players and the PL will all want this to end very soon because it is, at best, an unnecessary nuissance, or at worst, an attempt to set a very dangerous precedent where private property ownership is challenged by rioting consumers and is the football's equivalent of the Capitol Hill insurrection. What's next? Overthrow the Coca-Cola Company management because Coke consumers do not like their advertising model?
What do I think is going to happen? The club will invite several protester representatives to "constructive dialogue talks" which will take place for a while and then they will create a new structure within the club for something like "supporter stakeholder supervision" which will be sold as a reasonable compromise as the owners have listened to fans and have taken actions to ensure their voice continues to be heard and is part of the club going forward.