Pompey have new owners

[T.A]

Good job I banned that poster when I did really.

http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/news/...y-michael-eisners-tornante-group-3723005.aspx

Obviously money doesn't mean everything but it'll be interesting to see what kind of players they go after now.

 

[Cornish Piskie]

I hope this really is the a new start for Pompey and not a false dawn.

Not knowing what the situation there is, can I ask please, do you know how much money is available for team rebuilding and how likely is it that the new regime will be able to attract the players that will build a team of sufficient quality to challenge for promotion..?

Perhaps its too soon to tell yet, but I hope it comes good for you guys.... not at our expense of course.... but if you finish next season in second place, beneath the 'addicks then that would be an excellent outcome. PUP PPU

 

[Super_horns]

Are they for real this time?

 

[HarvSFC]

 

[Bucket_]

I hope this really is the a new start for Pompey and not a false dawn.

Not knowing what the situation there is, can I ask please, do you know how much money is available for team rebuilding and how likely is it that the new regime will be able to attract the players that will build a team of sufficient quality to challenge for promotion..?

Perhaps its too soon to tell yet, but I hope it comes good for you guys.... not at our expense of course.... but if you finish next season in second place, beneath the 'addicks then that would be an excellent outcome. PUP PPU

We might have the finances for some extra wages on top of what we would have had with the PST, but the indications are that the budget won't be hugely different from what we have now - he wants a slow and steady progression rather than just throwing money around and forcing our way up the leagues.

Are they for real this time?

I guess we'll find out.. I'm (very) cautiously optimistic. Either way, I think the fan-owned model had got near to as far as it could go, and it ended on the perfect note with picking up the L2 title.

 

[ProfessorGreen]

Once bitten, twice shy.

Twice bitten, you'd learn surely?

Thrice bitten? Time will tell but if it's the case I won't have the same sympathy as before.

Having a progressive fan run club is what dreams are made of in these leagues now - ask Orient. Pompey could have got to Championship on that model where I think then outside investment would be possible from multiple sources where they can step back and assess the options. All these foreign owners talk the same deal and win everyone over in the beginning. Only time will tell and I hope it goes well as no club should go through the turmoil of a rogue owner, but if that happens this time it's your own fault chaps!

 

[Trapdoor]

This is the definition of insanity.

Championship stability under their existing model should have been the aim. Very achievable from an economic perspective. To go back to what nearly destroyed then before is at best a high risk decision and at worst suicidal insanity.

 

[Jabba the gut]

Once bitten, twice shy.

Twice bitten, you'd learn surely?

Thrice bitten? Time will tell but if it's the case I won't have the same sympathy as before...

Nobody will. If this goes tits up in ten years then I personally won't have any sympathy whatsoever.

Utter lunacy. Sold on the cheap it seems, at a time when they've just won the Division under fan ownership.

Of course we keep hearing the excuse about the stadium, but as you know we have a stadium with two sides worse than anything at Fratton Park (our Old Grandstand is the only remaining wooden stand in the FL and has to be given emergency dispensation every season) and have somehow managed to begin redevelopment under fan-ownership. Add to that the fact that AFC Wimbledon are building an entire stadium with London real estate and building costs and the claim that Portsmouth simply had to sell to Eisner at this precise moment rings hollow to me.

It sounds more like self-justification than a genuine argument. While the costs to Portsmouth of addressing the issue of Fratton Park might be greater, they're also a vastly bigger and more famous club with all the advantages that entails - for example more Season ticket holders alone than the average gate of both ourselves and AFC Wimbledon combined.

As far as their playing ambitions are concerned, if the somewhat dubious claims that the rush for Eisner's filthy lucre has nothing to do with furtive dreams of the Greed-Is Good-League are true, it's difficult to understand why they need to ditch fan-ownership at this point.

We once came within a point of the League One playoffs in a far harder third-tier era than that of today; after our mid-season was gutted by the death from cancer of one of our most important players and the associated emotional fallout; while paying some players Conference wages; and at a time giant clubs for that level like Leeds, Norwich and Southampton, as well as newly-minted Brighton were our rivals. I find it difficult to believe that Pompey couldn't have done better than us under fan-ownership.

If at the point they were inevitably promoted from League One they felt they absolutely had to sustain Championship football at all costs, surely that would be a far better time to reconsider their ownership model? (Although in my opinion this sort of thinking is a shame as I believe there's more to a football club than League position). The idea that no buyers would appear when a club like Pompey were one step away from the Greed-Is-Good League is unlikely in the extreme and the Trust would be in a very strong position to extract a far more lucrative deal.

For those fans who were against this I hope in ten years time we don't get desperate pleas for help if things go tits up under Eisner or his successor (he's an old man and fans no longer have any say in who the club is sold to). I suspect very few FL fans will give a toss.

Eisner is surely only acting as a kind of venture capitalist. He sees the chance to take on an underachieving business, inject enough capital to take it to the next level (which regardless of what some Pompey fans claim they want or what noises he makes now is surely the Premier League in his eyes) and either rake in the huge revenues at the top or sell for a massive profit.

The spanner in the works is the ticking clock. Eisner and all the American owners know that eventually there will be some form of a closed shop breakaway at the top (even UEFA recognise it judging by their recent angry complaints of blackmail by the big clubs).

When that happens the game of musical chairs will stop and depending on the form the breakaway takes the door will shut for clubs like Pompey. Eisner and his counterparts elsewhere will then scramble to dump their clubs. Sorry to hurt anyone's pride but the idea that "tradition" or some such cobblers will keep the historic structure intact is for the birds. The lucrative foreign market that will drive the breakaway are not the slightest bit interested in watching Pompey v Stoke or West Brom on a Monday evening, if they could be watching Real Madrid v Manchester United in the Shanghai Capital Investments World or European Super League fixture instead.

The next 10-15 years will be very interesting indeed.

 

[Jabba the gut]

Are they for real this time?

 

[Jabba the gut]

Are they for real this time?

Even if they are, Eisner is 75 years old. What guarantees do Pompey have over the next owner, or the one after that, or after that?

Astonishing that Eisner is apparently allowing no Trust involvement worthy of the name and the Trust just rolled over, with no alarm bells ringing.

But hey, apparently Saint Disney gives to charity (just like Gaydamak, Chanrai and a thousand other rich men good, bad and indifferent) so according to the Pompey bigwigs pushing the sale that proves he's a good guy.

Beyond belief.

 

[HertsWolf]

Having an independent supporters trust represented on the board would seem to be the epitome of good corporate governance. And removing it would appear to be counter-productive. But then so many CEOs and Chairmen seem to think it's a good idea to surround themselves with people who agree with them all the time.

So personally, I think the Pompey trust are mad.

 

[Bucket_]

Interesting that it's provoked such a negative reaction from other clubs, fair points in there though. I guess we'll see what happens. I definitely would have liked to have stuck with fan ownership and to see if we could get to the Championship, but the details/noises that have been coming out (since before Eisner's interest was made public too) of the club definitely gave the impression that it wasn't a sustainable model in the mid-long term. As for the Wimbledon stadium argument, I'm really not sure you can compare London real estate with Portsmouth..

Also where are the other Pompey fans? Have they not realised we can post in the League 1 forum yet?

 

[HertsWolf]

Interesting that it's provoked such a negative reaction from other clubs, fair points in there though. I guess we'll see what happens.

Possibly because many other clubs have been in this position. Long time ago but we were within minutes of being wound up. Look at the parlous state of a whole bunch of clubs. Brash new owners with zero connection to the city or the club (maybe Eisner's got a pad in Leigh Park or maybe in Hilsea somewhere) tend not to be good news. Tend. There are exceptions but as a rule, absent, distant, foreign owners haven't had the best of track records. Could be worse, could have been a German crane company.

 

[SMH]

Being the sad sack I am, I bothered to go on Youtube and watch Michael Eisner's presentation and subsequent Q&A to Pompey fans in the Guildhall. I can see why they have approved it. He talks the talk, has a good track record, seems to have a smart plan involving investing in their own youth system rather than paying players like Crouch, Benjani, Pedro Mendes and co thousands upon thousands a week and of course has lots of money which is probably the biggest factor as to why the Pompey fans have fallen for him. My biggest worry would be his age. Would his sons have the same commitment Eisner does years down the line when the worst happens? Especially if the progress up the league takes a long time. Eisner talked a lot about playing the long game. With all due respect Eisner himself may not have time to play the long game.

 

[Bucket_]

The continuity (or potential lack of) is definitely my biggest concern - Eisner himself seems fine. His sons seem just as interested and keen to take over the reigns once Eisner Snr kicks the bucket, but who's to say if that'll still be the case in 5-10 years time?

 

[iWomble]

As for the Wimbledon stadium argument, I'm really not sure you can compare London real estate with Portsmouth..

That's actually his point. It's massively more expensive for us to build a new stadium than it would be for you.

The whole thing seems bonkers to me. Jack Walker was a good guy at Blackburn but then look what happened. It's not whether you can trust Eisner, but that your control is now gone. At least until the next bankruptcy. The fan-ownership model rescued you from the depths, put you on an even keel and delivered the league title. It's a tragedy for football that you'll never know how far you could have got. I hope it's not a tragedy for Pompey too.

 

[Bar Carousel]

There's been a lot of discussion on here from fans of other clubs but very few Pompey fans.

The long and short of the this situation is that the majority of reasonable Pompey fans didn't want to sell to an outsider. We were proud of owning our own club, and accepted that we would never become world beaters, but had the assurance that we would never have to go through all that we have endured (for the best part of 40 years, not just the post FA Cup win melt-down).

However, a game changer has forced many to reassess their position. Our ground. It's not that it just needs some work, and a lick of paint. It's verging on the dangerous. Our council have for years been lenient and accepted that each of the myriad of 'owners' were going to build us a nice new ground and all the problems would go away. However, the post FA Cup decline has resulted in this grace period being exploited and used up.

Our capacity was reduced, despite there being some 2000 seats still fixed in the ground. Year on year this is being cut more. Profiling of steps, narrow walkways, and more concerning, structural issues with the stadium itself have all got to a point where safety certificates are getting harder to come by.

This isn't just a few tweaks here and there, it is major work. A budget in the region of £5m has been muted, but this is just a ball park figure and only when exploratory works have been undertaken, can a true price be put to cover the works. It could be even more. This isn't a sum of money to improve the stadium, just an amount to keep us where we are as of today.

Without finding that money NOW, we face having our capacity cut again and again to a point where it could be so small that we would be worth with virtually no playing budget. Then you're in a dangerous downwards spiral. Not enough income being generated on small crowds, leads to a low end playing budget, leading to a lack of aspiration other than to try and stay in the football league every season, leading to dwindling crowds and ultimately a lack of money to resolve the ground situation. Then what? We sell to any Tom, Dick or Harry that will buy us?

We received some £3m as part of the purchase of the club after land behind the Fratton End was tied in with a property developer to build a new Tesco store. As of this summer that money will have ran out. All of it ring-fenced in an escrow account monitored by the council to ensure it was only spent on ground maintenance. That £3m has resulted in no increased capacity, and still to a point that reduced capacity is a real imminent risk.

Unlike Wimbledon, Brighton etc, we don't have a shadow benefactor pumping millions into the club and writing it off as equity. What we generate is what we've spent. Quite clearly, that isn't enough to address the real problems that we have with our ground. Unless one of the high net worth shareholders suddenly say that they'll cover all the costs, we're effectively screwed. And even then, that money would reduce Trust equity to a point where we could loose any control over the club anyway.

The selling of the club is a hard one. Not something anyone wants to do (other than a few premiership addicted types). But it is a must for the future of the club.

If we have to sell up, then Eisner's investment company Tornante (we're not selling solely to him but his family who own and run Tornante), then as far as transparent owners go, he's the best in a very long line of questionable types that we've had linked to our club since I became a fan of the club in the early 80's.

If it all goes tits up again, then one things for sure. We didn't relinquish control of the club due to some mercenary charge up the leagues in order to sign players on obscene amounts of money. It was our only realistic option thanks to the greed and ineptitude of the owners before us who completely neglected our stadium for decades.

 

[iWomble]

Unlike Wimbledon, Brighton etc, we don't have a shadow benefactor pumping millions into the club and writing it off as equity.

I have no idea where you get that from but it's absolute bollocks. We have one benefactor, who isn't in shadow but publicly visible, and who puts in less than £100K a year. Everything else is from normal income streams and fundraising amongst the other fans.

 

[Bar Carousel]

I have no idea where you get that from but it's absolute bollocks. We have one benefactor, who isn't in shadow but publicly visible, and who puts in less than £100K a year. Everything else is from normal income streams and fundraising amongst the other fans.

In which case you deserve more credit from me than I have offered you in the past. To get to where you have on a budget based on 5/6000 fans + £100k each season is hugely impressive.

How does the £100k work? Is it just a donation each year with no interest in equity?

And how is the fundraising being handled to build the new ground and purchase the land etc?

 

[iWomble]

He generally offers to match the funding raised in donations through the "We are Wimbledon" fund, which is about £100K. It's all recorded as donations. He also stumped up the wages and (£10K-£25K) transfer fees for a couple of players when we were non-league but it's a very small amount in our overall turnover.

You can't actually buy equity in the club - the share issue is the 25,000,000 shares which we bought between us as fans to set up the club (with a majority allocated to the Trust and controlled by one member, one vote regardless of how many shares you own).

The new ground is being built because of our own deal with the devil in the shape of Galliard Homes who are building horrible and unaffordable flats and giving us very expensive land for the stadium because that's a condition from the council. The fundraising for the construction costs we'll have to meet separately but we have the facilities in place for loans for that.

Generally, we set our budget each year to at least break even if not turn a small profit - including getting knocked out of every cup in the first round and no special TV appearance money. Even doing that, we've managed to get into League One.

That's what really frustrates me about Pompey - with a relatively massive fanbase compared to us, couldn't something have been worked out with developer for a new or renovated stadium?

ps latest accounts all here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbinzBMBdrcOF9jSlJFTUFsZzQ/view

 

[Bar Carousel]

He generally offers to match the funding raised in donations through the "We are Wimbledon" fund, which is about £100K. It's all recorded as donations. He also stumped up the wages and (£10K-£25K) transfer fees for a couple of players when we were non-league but it's a very small amount in our overall turnover.

You can't actually buy equity in the club - the share issue is the 25,000,000 shares which we bought between us as fans to set up the club (with a majority allocated to the Trust and controlled by one member, one vote regardless of how many shares you own).

The new ground is being built because of our own deal with the devil in the shape of Galliard Homes who are building horrible and unaffordable flats and giving us very expensive land for the stadium because that's a condition from the council. The fundraising for the construction costs we'll have to meet separately but we have the facilities in place for loans for that.

Generally, we set our budget each year to at least break even if not turn a small profit - including getting knocked out of every cup in the first round and no special TV appearance money. Even doing that, we've managed to get into League One.

That's what really frustrates me about Pompey - with a relatively massive fanbase compared to us, couldn't something have been worked out with developer for a new or renovated stadium?

ps latest accounts all here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbinzBMBdrcOF9jSlJFTUFsZzQ/view

Impressive stuff, and leads to questions over why those running the club for the last 4 years couldn't have explored your model further.

The best we got was an in-house study to assess the viability for a new stadium. Portsmouth has no available land to build something the size of a football stadium on, and so it was established that we would have to redevelop Fratton Park.

Our recent toxic past has meant that lenders won't touch us with a barge pole, so only crowd funding could allow for major infrastructure projects for the foreseeable future.

Raising £5m for repair work seemed unachievable in a short space of time, so a new stand was pie in the sky.

 

[FarehamPompey]

Eisner isn't the owner, his Tornante group is, which involves his sons etc who are all sport mad. So if he dies, then it won't (i hope) just be flogged on to any old owner. As said above, he has guaranteed 5m for stadium repairs and 5m into the academy.

Also, where have some of you got that we could challenge for Championship from under the PST? We had an average wage budget for L2, and doubt we'd compete for L1 under PST, let alone championship where there are 20m signings.

 

[Meadow]

I have no idea where you get that from but it's absolute bollocks. We have one benefactor, who isn't in shadow but publicly visible, and who puts in less than £100K a year. Everything else is from normal income streams and fundraising amongst the other fans.

Erm.. both our Vice Presidents pump in about £300k a year each in addition to Mike matching the WAW contributions - from what I remember. Still a relatively small amount though. Puts my DT membership x2, Dons Draw and We are Wimbledon contributions to shame.

 

[iWomble]

Erm.. both our Vice Presidents pump in about £300k a year each in addition to Mike matching the WAW contributions - from what I remember. Still a relatively small amount though. Puts my DT membership x2, Dons Draw and We are Wimbledon contributions to shame.

Show me that in the accounts then. Total donations £345K. Unless you mean Ian and others' sponsorship, which adds up to £500K and includes all the sponsorship by Sports Interactive and other commercial firms plus advertising income.

 

[Meadow]

Show me that in the accounts then. Total donations £345K. Unless you mean Ian and others' sponsorship, which adds up to £500K and includes all the sponsorship by Sports Interactive and other commercial firms plus advertising income.

I'm sure I read somewhere that both our VP's put in £300k. Maybe it was a one-off.

My bad.

 

[HarvSFC]

Could be worse, could have been a German crane company.

I'll bite.

Although, we don't look perfect on the outside right now and we do flog off our best playing assets each year, said German crane company have turned us from a League One club into one finishing in the top 10 of the Premier League for four consecutive seasons. Even this year we were competing against Inter Milan in a competitive fixture at the San Siro and got a trip to Wembley.

I know you have links to Portsmouth, but your hopes with Wolves right now are that Fosun have the same success as the Liebherr's have had with us.

As for Pompey, I hope we get to play you again soon.....

 

[HertsWolf]

I'll bite.

Although, we don't look perfect on the outside right now and we do flog off our best playing assets each year, said German crane company have turned us from a League One club into one finishing in the top 10 of the Premier League for four consecutive seasons. Even this year we were competing against Inter Milan in a competitive fixture at the San Siro and got a trip to Wembley.

I know you have links to Portsmouth, but your hopes with Wolves right now are that Fosun have the same success as the Liebherr's have had with us.

As for Pompey, I hope we get to play you again soon.....

I don't really have Pompey links at all. Locally I watch Boro and occasionally Eastleigh and Winchester. Southampton's a good success story, and I would be very pleased if Fosun can do half what Ms Liebherr has done for you. On the other hand, we managed to beat Stoke this season.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

Eisner isn't the owner, his Tornante group is, which involves his sons etc who are all sport mad. So if he dies, then it won't (i hope) just be flogged on to any old owner. As said above, he has guaranteed 5m for stadium repairs and 5m into the academy.

Also, where have some of you got that we could challenge for Championship from under the PST? We had an average wage budget for L2, and doubt we'd compete for L1 under PST, let alone championship where there are 20m signings.

There is no way on this Earth you had an "average wage budget for League Two".

 

[FarehamPompey]

There is no way on this Earth you had an "average wage budget for League Two".

We did. The finances were released in the PST pack before the fans had to vote on whether or not Eisner bought the club.

 

[Don Tonberry]

Our wage budget under fan ownership would have been around £3.3 million, which is an average wage budget for this level apparently.

As much as everyone wanted the fan ownership model to work, the harsh truth is that too much expenditure on Fratton Park would have been needed so much that the rest of the club (mainly the academy) would have stood still. The only way we could have progressed was to sell a play worth millions (which is something we don't have) or get very lucky and go on a cup run to hopefully land a plum draw.

Tornante's arrival guarantees the stadium will be fit for purpose in the medium term whilst other options are looked at and the academy receives a much needed boost to the coffers. It also means that should Eisner want to plough more money into the club, at least it could be used to bat off the vultures in the higher divisions, an advantage Bournemouth had when their takeover went through.

We're all a bit tentative but Eisner and his family have proven credentials unlike the previous dodgy owners.