THE news that Queen of the South’s board of directors had succeeded in keeping a fans’ representative out of boardroom meetings was a setback for the growing movement of fans who want to have a say in the running of the club.
It beggars belief that in this year of 2017, most clubs in Scotland are still run as the personal fiefdoms of wealthy people who, with the notable exceptions of Ann Budge at Hearts and Dermot Desmond at Celtic, often leave their business brains behind when they deal with their ‘beloved’ favourite club.
The ownership model of most Scottish clubs was devised in the late 19th century and with a few exceptions, such as Celtic and Rangers becoming Plcs rather than just Ltds, clubs became companies and woe betide any club that decided to do the decent thing and encourage their fans to organise and elect a ‘fan director’ to the board – the pressure put on club directors across Scotland to have nothing to do with such revolutionary ideas was immense.
Still, the people would not be denied, and while the Queens’ decision is a setback, it is only a small one as the tide is heading not just to fans’ representation but fans’ ownership of clubs.
Apart from possibly five clubs – Celtic, Rangers, Hibs, Hearts, and Aberdeen – no Scottish club has the fan base to keep itself alive based on ticket sales alone, and even in that five, Rangers and Hearts suffered ‘insolvency events’ as the League rules term it, while Celtic were hours from collapse in 1994, with a share structure that was laughable and no fans’ representative anywhere near the boardroom.
Until recently most clubs lived beyond their means with television income that English Championship clubs, never mind Premier League clubs, would sneer at. The situation is better financially, apparently, and as far as anyone can tell, no club in the Premiership is in danger of having an ‘insolvency event’.
The majority of Scotland’s clubs are still run by boards that usually involve a businessman – they are nearly all men – and his associates owning the vast majority of the shares so they can dictate what happens at the club.
Yes, these chairmen and directors have to put their hands in their pockets every so often, if only to stock up the bar in the boardroom, and to be fair, nobody in Scottish football is in it to make dollops of money – well, not since Charles Green upped sticks from Ibrox.
It is an antediluvian piece of nonsense, however, that many clubs simply won’t countenance having a fans’ representative as a director, and the SPFL and SFA should get together and insist they do – except, of course, that both bodies’ chief executives dance to the tune of the people who hate fan representation.
Fortunately the likes of Motherwell, Dunfermline Athletic and Stirling Albion – the first club to be 100 per cent owned by a Supporters Trust – have shown that fan ownership is possible. You may point to East Stirlingshire and say what good did that do them, but that’s not the point – fans should own their clubs or at least have a say in running them.
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