Freehold Crowdfunding?

Should the club create a crowdfunding project to raise funds to asssit in purchase the freehold?

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No, for the amount they need it would take forever.

what if the target was 1 miillion quid?

I’d buy it myself,and rent it back to the club for £450,000 per year…:smile::face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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What if the target was 6 million quid? You don’t know what we need to buy the freehold - you haven’t really thought this through have you?

if the freehold is 7 million quid

the club club could raise the funds via a combination of crowdfunding, bank loans and investors

I like this suggestion a lot. Or, more to the point, some opportunity for fans to buy a stake in the freehold that makes it financially accessible to people with differing wallet capacities.

An “easy entry” option - bear with me on this - would be to have a fundraising campaign around buying a square foot of turf. An average pitch equates to 60,000 sq.ft. How about each sq.ft. of turf is marketed as a share in the freehold, say, for £50.

That has the potential to raise £3M. Not saying it’s feasible in its entirety but on the upside, you would literally have a stake in the ground!!

Maybe a trade off could be that for every £50 anyone invests, they get some “freebie” as a token back from the club which doesn’t eat into the club’s profits too much, e.g. buy 1 sq.ft and get a free ticket to bring along a mate; buy 2 sq.ft and get to meet the manager and have a signed photo, and so on.

You would also receive a certificate to say you had XX stake in the ground and this could be passed on to future generations as a gesture of commitment rather than a tradeable asset as such.

Any investor could also have their name up on the ground, the way the club did the 125 years symbol.

Plenty of arts and cultural projects provide an opportunity - beyond corporate sponsorship - for “average joe” to become a patron/supporter of a facility as part of a capital investment and fundraising campaign, usually getting recognition by being named on a visible board or in brickwork or getting your name on a chair, in marketing materials and getting some dispensation for future events.

There would have to be some criteria or clause to prevent non fans from acquiring these, to prevent any old investor coming in to hoover these up en masse. Possibly limit anyone purchaser to 10 “shares”.

But as a mechanism to engage fans, and one where we know the end result is the “freedom” of the club, and one fans could help to speed up the process, then I can see this is worth consideration.

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That’s a better idea, I would imagine that most people would want something tangible for their investment, not everyone is altruistic enough to hand over their money.

How about a transfer fund. Everybody chucks a quid or two in at every home game and it goes towards players and wages every pre season.

We have a brick on the wall outside if that counts? :smile:

with crowdfunding you can offer equity or reward-based incentives

No â– â– â– â–  Sherlock.

Bet you don’t need no education either. :rofl:

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Pink Floyd :joy:

Is that our new transfer target?

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:grin: you mean the keeper i was on about? i can say now because he has told the gaffer, it was Niall Clayton released by Oxford utd, i watched him play for Alvechurch tuesday night, i thought he could have done better with Barwell’s second goal.

Someone else should have thought of that some time after the Fellows Park sale?

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We don’t know exactly how much we need so this wouldn’t work.

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I’d be interested in this as long as the return for buying a certain amount was in the form of a pension when I retire.

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I hear Suffolk life do a good scheme.

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