Are AMERICAN owners POISON to a club ?

Ernest · Feb 15, 2016

Is there one American OWNED English team that has been a success ? It seems whenever a YANK buys a club they go into a DECLINE, Liverpool swopped one bunch of clueless YANKS for another, Fulham have been DOWNHILL ever since Khan ROCKED up, the Glazers have RUINED Manchester United, Sunderland have done NOTHING and look to be going DOWN, even Arsenal with their Yank part owner have been UNDER achieving for years.

If I supported a team that was thinking of SELLING out to American owners I would be PETRIFIED about the future.

Why are Americans so USELESS when they get involved with ENGLISH clubs ?

surrey jim · Feb 15, 2016

Randy Lerner not doing too well with Villa either.

Nixonator · Feb 15, 2016

Yes, villa too.

What's worse is when they come in and then campaign to close up shop with no relegation/promotion to protect their investments.

Then again, our FA chairman seems to like suggesting similarly outrageous things

Greg Bobkin · Feb 15, 2016

Off the pitch United are doing fine. ON the pitch, however...

Says a lot about modern football though - more business than sport in many respects. Take for example of the sponsorship of the Albion subs! Not sure if it is a good or a bad thing, just the way it is...

nicko31 · Feb 15, 2016

Think we should remember our sponsor is American.

The concern is not American its more anyone who enters the game purely to make money with little regard for much else.

We are lucky to have TB and to be fair Palace are lucky to have Steve Parish

Pinkie Brown · Feb 15, 2016

Those owners from the far east are equally as clueless. When the Venky's took over Blackburn in the Premier League, they had no idea there was relegation. They soon found out.....

Many American owners see English clubs as a 'franchise' or 'brand' with no idea of the history and traditions of the game in this country. If they had their way, I don't doubt they would have their clubs playing occasional home games in Orlando or New York rather like when their own countries version of football (sic) comes to Wembley.

Pinkie Brown · Feb 15, 2016

nicko31 said:
Think we should remember our sponsor is American.

The concern is not American its more anyone who enters the game purely to make money with little regard for much else.

We are lucky to have TB and to be fair Palace are lucky to have Steve Parish

Hasn't he recently flogged half the club to Americans?

Gwylan · Feb 15, 2016

Nixonator said:
What's worse is when they come in and then campaign to close up shop with no relegation/promotion to protect their investments.

Can you give an example of a US owner who has campaigned for this? The only person I can remember suggesting this was Phil Gartside (representing a UK owner)

Icy Gull · Feb 15, 2016

Pinkie Brown said:
Hasn't he recently flogged half the club to Americans?

Yup, got his exit strategy in place...

Icy Gull · Feb 15, 2016

Gwylan said:
Can you give an example of a US owner who has campaigned for this? The only person I can remember suggesting this was Phil Gartside (representing a UK owner)

Once they own enough Premier League clubs they will be able to campaign to change the rules to 4 quarters though and games lasting most of the day. :smile:

I think Soccer may then really take off in the USA

Hiney · Feb 15, 2016

Ernest said:
Is there one American OWNED English team that has been a success ? It seems whenever a YANK buys a club they go into a DECLINE, Liverpool swopped one bunch of clueless YANKS for another, Fulham have been DOWNHILL ever since Khan ROCKED up, the Glazers have RUINED Manchester United, Sunderland have done NOTHING and look to be going DOWN, even Arsenal with their Yank part owner have been UNDER achieving for years.

If I supported a team that was thinking of SELLING out to American owners I would be PETRIFIED about the future.

Why are Americans so USELESS when they get involved with ENGLISH clubs ?

[MENTION=1416]Ernest[/MENTION] I would be more CONCERNED that you would have to REPLACE your full ENGLISH with massive SAUSAGE, with a plate of PANCAKES and WAFFLES. Your SAUCE would not look quite so SEXY, as it DRIBBLES over a pile of old American TOSS.

Simster · Feb 15, 2016

Gwylan said:
Can you give an example of a US owner who has campaigned for this? The only person I can remember suggesting this was Phil Gartside (representing a UK owner)

Quite, it's complete nonsense.

American owners have been terrible for a variety of other reasons though. It is shameful that they've been allowed to buy whilst saddling clubs with unimaginable debts or failing to invest at all whilst skimming off vast amounts of money from television deals.

El Presidente · Feb 15, 2016

Gwylan said:
Can you give an example of a US owner who has campaigned for this? The only person I can remember suggesting this was Phil Gartside (representing a UK owner)

Richard Bevan mentioned it at an LMA conference in 2011.

No one has said anything publicly, and in theory the FA could veto such a proposal, but we do now have 14 foreign owned clubs in the Premier League. I have been advised that US investors are unhappy with the prospect of losing 80% of their income.

From a cash generation perspective anyone putting £200 million into buying a club would want certainty of cash flows, and abolishing relegation.

I appreciate that there would be in theory more 'nothing' matches in the PL, but suspect that Champions League places would be allocated along something similar to Rugby League playoffs such as

Top three qualify automatically.

next seven places are in a play-off

7th v 10th (Match A)
8th v 9th (Match B) (one legged games)

Winners of match A plays 6th place team (Match C) , winner of match B plays 5th place team (one leg) (Match D)

Winners of Match C and D play each other

Winners then play 4th place team at Wembley or over two legs for final Champions League place.

This would keep the interest going for 14 or 15 clubs trying to get into the top 10 places, and Sky would cream their jeans over the prospect.

If it sounds far fetched, the big clubs in the ECA are presently campaigning for changes to Champions League entry, so that 'Big' clubs are never relegated from the competition.

Gwylan · Feb 15, 2016

Pinkie Brown said:
Those owners from the far east are equally as clueless. When the Venky's took over Blackburn in the Premier League, they had no idea there was relegation. They soon found out.....

That's an urban myth. The idea of the takeover was a means of promoting football within India, the owners had been following football for a while so would certainly have noticed clubs being relegated. Even if they hadn't known; this was a £43m deal, do you really think there'd have been no due diligence carried out?

It's true to say however that they weren't aware of how devastating relegation could be - they admit as much

father_and_son · Feb 15, 2016

There is a business model in US Sports that works as a [TV dominated] money making engine.

European (and especially British "soccer") is considerably more popular worldwide than their own sports so it's easy to see the attraction of trying to get into this market.

But like so many American businesses worldwide, they don't really understand that they can't just transplant their own way of doing things in another country and expect it to work (with the exceptions of fast food and coffee, which they have quite successfully shoe-horned into other cultures).

I think some naively believe they can change the market here and others just don't do the due diligence they should (and our own controlling bodies allow huge risks to be taken, such as the massive leveraging of ManU and change in priorities that comes when you have to service such a debt).

There's a point at which someone with brains and marketing for the McDonalds of British/European football and create a business model that works financially for them without f**king up the club, the team or the fan base and then we are all doomed to the same sh*tty bland cr*p being rolled out to every club!

nicko31 · Feb 15, 2016

Pinkie Brown said:
Hasn't he recently flogged half the club to Americans?

Did regain control at least, could have just taken the money and run

Nixonator · Feb 15, 2016

Simster said:
Quite, it's complete nonsense.

American owners have been terrible for a variety of other reasons though. It is shameful that they've been allowed to buy whilst saddling clubs with unimaginable debts or failing to invest at all whilst skimming off vast amounts of money from television deals.

If memory serves, Bevan pointed to predominately American and Asian owners. You're kidding yourself if you don't think they want this, just as the higher profile american owners want guaranteed CL places. I trust I don't need to give you examples for that.

Gwylan · Feb 15, 2016

El Presidente said:
If it sounds far fetched, the big clubs in the ECA are presently campaigning for changes to Champions League entry, so that 'Big' clubs are never relegated from the competition.

It doesn't sound far-fetched at all. The only problem would be that such a proposal would have to be adopted within a season, say December. If it were to be adopted for the following season then half the clubs would vote against in case they were the wrong side of the divide. The problem would be then whether the Championship clubs would have a case against the PL.

Imagine it happened this season and the PL said that no Championship team would come up ... and Brighton won the league. I can't imagine Barber taking it meekly on the chin (and I'm not sure that UEFA would be impressed either). The legal fallout would be horrendous - except for the lawyers of course.

And if there were no relegation, there'd be nothing stopping a team playing a load of pub players at £500 a week and pocket the huge sums of money flooding into its account. I take your point about keeping teams interested but Villa, for example, wouldn't make the play-offs in their wildest fantasies so could just pay off their squad and play a team of no-hopers

El Presidente · Feb 15, 2016

Gwylan said:
I The legal fallout would be horrendous - except for the lawyers of course.

And if there were no relegation, there'd be nothing stopping a team playing a load of pub players at £500 a week and pocket the huge sums of money flooding into its account. I take your point about keeping teams interested but Villa, for example, wouldn't make the play-offs in their wildest fantasies so could just pay off their squad and play a team of no-hopers

Yup, understand where you are coming from, and of course, the lawyers, like cockroaches, will be the most successful in all this.

Realistically at the start of each season any 3 of 14/15 clubs could be relegated, so an investor is looking at approximately a 20% chance of losing their honey pot in the form of Sky/BT money.

Ideally they would like that to be reduced to 0%, via abolishing relegation. As you say, this could cause a stink.

The PL could however reduce relegation to two up, two down, and in order to be promoted it would involve a play-off between the side that finishes second bottom of the PL and the side that wins the playoffs in the Championship.

This would address the pub side issue that you mentioned, whilst preserving the 'integrity' of the promotion/relegation rules.

Richard Scudamore has shown that with initiatives such as the '39th game', in which PL clubs would play one match a year overseas, that everything and anything is on the table when it comes to the wiseguys in charge of the top division.

Kalimantan Gull · Feb 15, 2016

It does seem that the US owners want to make a profit whereas the Eastern owners want glory, a plaything, and possibly a nice high-profile business through which to launder their fortunes

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Are AMERICAN owners POISON to a club ?

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