Armchair Loyalist
New member
- Jul 26, 2004
- 210
Thoroughly interesting article/interview with TB in The Times tomorrow
[B]Tony Bloom, who has taken over as chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion (as revealed on Times Online late on Monday), has rejected comparisons with Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner. Bloom, 39, has provided unsecured, interest-free loans that will enable the League One club to complete its new stadium at a final cost of £93 million, but yesterday he emphasized that the most significant contrast between himself and the Russian was not the relative status of their clubs or the use to which their investment will be put.
“There have been comparisons, which I wasn’t expecting,” Bloom said. “There are huge differences between us, and one of the most significant is that I have been a passionate Brighton fan for over thirty years. He [Abramovich] wanted to buy a Premier League and he chose Chelsea, and good luck to him for doing that. My Grandad Harry was vice-chairman of Brighton for nine years in the seventies, my uncle Ray has been involved with the club for 20 years, and I saw my first match at the Goldstone Ground in 1978.”
It was at around the same time that the young Bloom, a future international-calibre poker player, started playing on the slot machines in the arcades of Brighton’s West Street, trying to make his pocket money work for him until he realized that the odds were not in his favour. Instead he went on to study mathematics at Manchester University, worked for Victor Chandler, created and sold a betting website, and amassed a fortune from property and finance.
“I was always a gambler at heart, like my grandfather, so it’s in my blood,” he said. “I’m not promoting underage gambling for any reason, but in those days it was no problem to gamble on fruit machines at nine or ten.”
Times Archive
Becoming a football club chairman and financing a stadium would appear to be an entirely different scale of gambling, but Bloom is open about his motivation. “The prime reason for being involved is not a business decision,” he admitted. “It is totally different from the other investments that I make, very few of which are emotional.
“This is primarily for the love of the football club, to make sure that generations to come, grandchildren of our fans – my grandchildren – have a football club, and a stadium to play at. We’ve got to run it as a business, but we’ve got a huge head start because we won’t have interest or debts to pay. This is all my money. It is not loans from banks, and it is not somebody else’s money.”
Bloom was speaking at Withdean Stadium, the club’s cramped temporary home, where he has been able to pass unrecognised by most fellow supporters until now, even though he has been involved with the club for several years. He has already invested around £18 million, which has been converted into a 75 percent shareholding. He did not previously have a seat on the board, but did intend to take a more active role once the move to Falmer, where ground was broken last December, had been completed.
However, events moved more quickly than he had expected, and he was forced to get out the chequebook when it became clear that the world financial situation threatened the future of the stadium project. Withdean is a pleasant location on a sunny day, but Brighton cannot make money while they continue to play there. A mothballing of plans for the 25,000-seat stadium at Falmer, on the eastern outskirts of the city, would have severely compromised the club’s future
“This was always going to happen, but what changed the timing was the rise in the cost of the stadium because of the planning delays, and then the credit crunch,” he said. “Banks don’t react emotionally in the way we do – and a League One club was not an attractive business to lend to. But it’s impossible to do anything but lose money at Withdean.”
Because Bloom has not been in the public eye in the same way as Norman Cook (aka the DJ Fatboy Slim, another investor), some supporters have been suspicious about the source of his money and whether he will maintain the close links between board and supporters that were forged over many years of struggle – first to return from exile in Gillingham, and then the secure planning permission for the Falmer stadium. Others wonder how someone who did not appear on the recently published Sunday Times Rich List can deliver the level of finance he claims.
“I don’t seek publicity and if I could do this without any, I would,” Bloom said. “I don’t know how they compile the Rich Lists. A lot of people are not on there because people don’t know of them - like me. But I know a chairman of a football club is high-profile. So I accept it.
“Property is my main thing, mainly in the UK, but I have some international property investments and in private equity. £93 million is a huge amount of money and I never envisaged this even three years ago, when the costs involved were much lower, but if I want the football club to exist, this is what is needed.
“I’ve deliberately been in the background, but I’ve been fully aware of what has been going on. I’m also fully aware of fans’ concerns because of what happened to us under previous ownership. Once the stadium is built, the club has a long-term future. The land the stadium will be built on will be close to worthless without the stadium on it, whereas the Goldstone Ground had land value and the previous owner cashed in on that.
“The culture of the club and the closeness between the fans and the club will not change. Those characteristics are great. Maybe as we become a bigger organisation things will change, but if we have to be run it a little more professionally we don’t want to lose the relationship and the openness with the fans.”
Bloom’s ambitions for the club are plain even though he will not be present every day – his wife is Australian and he has a 17-year-old son Down Under. “That has changed me more than becoming chairman of Brighton,” he said. “I will spend time in Australia, especially in the winter, but being chairman is not necessarily a full-time job. It’s not my job to run the club, it’s my job to oversee it. We have a chief executive, a secretary, a manger, a press officer. The club will not need me on a day-to-day basis, but I’m always at the end of the phone.
“This is effectively my first day in the office, and I’m really enjoying it. There is huge excitement, and a sense of a huge responsibility, but I’m feeling confident. I know there is a responsibility. I know that the fans have seen so much over the years and I don’t think they’re expecting any huge things immediately. But certainly Russell [Slade, the manager] and I are desperate to get to the Championship as soon as possible, but realistically there are no certainties in football.”
And few sets of fans have had to be as realistic as those of Brighton. “They know that we haven’t had a stadium for 12 years, they know that we nearly went out of existence in 1997. They will appreciate what today means more than any other set of fans. And I, as a fan, cannot wait to be at Falmer and then we can see the road towards possible success. Obviously the aim is to be in the Premier League one day - we’re all in it for that. But let’s get to the championship first, be a good championship club.”
Anyone who has come to football in the past 15 years will have no memory of the Brighton that Bloom first watched – a club on its way up from the old third division to the first, regularly attracting crowds of over 30,000. “I still think of us as a big club,” Bloom said. “I see no difference between us and Ipswich, Norwich, Southampton, Portsmouth.
“There are 30, 40 clubs who are similar, but because of where we’ve been in the last 15-20 years, although we’ve had some successes, I don’t want to say too much about that. But I still remember the glory days. Because of the problems, at Withdean we’ve lost a generation, and we have to work to get them back.
“We are the only league club in Sussex, we have a big catchment area and we want to make the most of that. We want people coming to Brighton, not Palace, Portsmouth or Charlton, and I think we can make that happen when we have Falmer.” [/B]
[B]Tony Bloom, who has taken over as chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion (as revealed on Times Online late on Monday), has rejected comparisons with Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner. Bloom, 39, has provided unsecured, interest-free loans that will enable the League One club to complete its new stadium at a final cost of £93 million, but yesterday he emphasized that the most significant contrast between himself and the Russian was not the relative status of their clubs or the use to which their investment will be put.
“There have been comparisons, which I wasn’t expecting,” Bloom said. “There are huge differences between us, and one of the most significant is that I have been a passionate Brighton fan for over thirty years. He [Abramovich] wanted to buy a Premier League and he chose Chelsea, and good luck to him for doing that. My Grandad Harry was vice-chairman of Brighton for nine years in the seventies, my uncle Ray has been involved with the club for 20 years, and I saw my first match at the Goldstone Ground in 1978.”
It was at around the same time that the young Bloom, a future international-calibre poker player, started playing on the slot machines in the arcades of Brighton’s West Street, trying to make his pocket money work for him until he realized that the odds were not in his favour. Instead he went on to study mathematics at Manchester University, worked for Victor Chandler, created and sold a betting website, and amassed a fortune from property and finance.
“I was always a gambler at heart, like my grandfather, so it’s in my blood,” he said. “I’m not promoting underage gambling for any reason, but in those days it was no problem to gamble on fruit machines at nine or ten.”
Times Archive
Becoming a football club chairman and financing a stadium would appear to be an entirely different scale of gambling, but Bloom is open about his motivation. “The prime reason for being involved is not a business decision,” he admitted. “It is totally different from the other investments that I make, very few of which are emotional.
“This is primarily for the love of the football club, to make sure that generations to come, grandchildren of our fans – my grandchildren – have a football club, and a stadium to play at. We’ve got to run it as a business, but we’ve got a huge head start because we won’t have interest or debts to pay. This is all my money. It is not loans from banks, and it is not somebody else’s money.”
Bloom was speaking at Withdean Stadium, the club’s cramped temporary home, where he has been able to pass unrecognised by most fellow supporters until now, even though he has been involved with the club for several years. He has already invested around £18 million, which has been converted into a 75 percent shareholding. He did not previously have a seat on the board, but did intend to take a more active role once the move to Falmer, where ground was broken last December, had been completed.
However, events moved more quickly than he had expected, and he was forced to get out the chequebook when it became clear that the world financial situation threatened the future of the stadium project. Withdean is a pleasant location on a sunny day, but Brighton cannot make money while they continue to play there. A mothballing of plans for the 25,000-seat stadium at Falmer, on the eastern outskirts of the city, would have severely compromised the club’s future
“This was always going to happen, but what changed the timing was the rise in the cost of the stadium because of the planning delays, and then the credit crunch,” he said. “Banks don’t react emotionally in the way we do – and a League One club was not an attractive business to lend to. But it’s impossible to do anything but lose money at Withdean.”
Because Bloom has not been in the public eye in the same way as Norman Cook (aka the DJ Fatboy Slim, another investor), some supporters have been suspicious about the source of his money and whether he will maintain the close links between board and supporters that were forged over many years of struggle – first to return from exile in Gillingham, and then the secure planning permission for the Falmer stadium. Others wonder how someone who did not appear on the recently published Sunday Times Rich List can deliver the level of finance he claims.
“I don’t seek publicity and if I could do this without any, I would,” Bloom said. “I don’t know how they compile the Rich Lists. A lot of people are not on there because people don’t know of them - like me. But I know a chairman of a football club is high-profile. So I accept it.
“Property is my main thing, mainly in the UK, but I have some international property investments and in private equity. £93 million is a huge amount of money and I never envisaged this even three years ago, when the costs involved were much lower, but if I want the football club to exist, this is what is needed.
“I’ve deliberately been in the background, but I’ve been fully aware of what has been going on. I’m also fully aware of fans’ concerns because of what happened to us under previous ownership. Once the stadium is built, the club has a long-term future. The land the stadium will be built on will be close to worthless without the stadium on it, whereas the Goldstone Ground had land value and the previous owner cashed in on that.
“The culture of the club and the closeness between the fans and the club will not change. Those characteristics are great. Maybe as we become a bigger organisation things will change, but if we have to be run it a little more professionally we don’t want to lose the relationship and the openness with the fans.”
Bloom’s ambitions for the club are plain even though he will not be present every day – his wife is Australian and he has a 17-year-old son Down Under. “That has changed me more than becoming chairman of Brighton,” he said. “I will spend time in Australia, especially in the winter, but being chairman is not necessarily a full-time job. It’s not my job to run the club, it’s my job to oversee it. We have a chief executive, a secretary, a manger, a press officer. The club will not need me on a day-to-day basis, but I’m always at the end of the phone.
“This is effectively my first day in the office, and I’m really enjoying it. There is huge excitement, and a sense of a huge responsibility, but I’m feeling confident. I know there is a responsibility. I know that the fans have seen so much over the years and I don’t think they’re expecting any huge things immediately. But certainly Russell [Slade, the manager] and I are desperate to get to the Championship as soon as possible, but realistically there are no certainties in football.”
And few sets of fans have had to be as realistic as those of Brighton. “They know that we haven’t had a stadium for 12 years, they know that we nearly went out of existence in 1997. They will appreciate what today means more than any other set of fans. And I, as a fan, cannot wait to be at Falmer and then we can see the road towards possible success. Obviously the aim is to be in the Premier League one day - we’re all in it for that. But let’s get to the championship first, be a good championship club.”
Anyone who has come to football in the past 15 years will have no memory of the Brighton that Bloom first watched – a club on its way up from the old third division to the first, regularly attracting crowds of over 30,000. “I still think of us as a big club,” Bloom said. “I see no difference between us and Ipswich, Norwich, Southampton, Portsmouth.
“There are 30, 40 clubs who are similar, but because of where we’ve been in the last 15-20 years, although we’ve had some successes, I don’t want to say too much about that. But I still remember the glory days. Because of the problems, at Withdean we’ve lost a generation, and we have to work to get them back.
“We are the only league club in Sussex, we have a big catchment area and we want to make the most of that. We want people coming to Brighton, not Palace, Portsmouth or Charlton, and I think we can make that happen when we have Falmer.” [/B]
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