Money Welcome

 

Just over two months ago we secured promotion back to League One with a tight 1-0 win against early pacesetters Walsall at Wembley in front of over 30k Wimbledon fans. Roll on a few weeks from that and we started to receive messages and an understanding from the club of the challenges that lay ahead financially entering League One.

I wrote a blog back in September 2022 about our ownership model https://stu9yearspodcastviewoffootball.blogspot.com/2022/09/time-to-look-forward.html and the challenges we faced with running Plough Lane, maximising income streams and servicing our debt that at the time was around £11m with a £400k yearly interest. Fast forward three years and we are having the same conversations and now entering a period where in two years we need to pay around £3m to Plough Lane Bond [PLB] holders. My opinion three years ago was we needed to look at external investment and nothing has changed, and if anything, my opinion has intensified that we are entering a period where big and potentially serious decisions are needed.

Back in November last year the Dons Trust Board [DTB] asked the DT members at a Special Genral Meeting to vote on a special resolution to reduce the shares held by the ownership AFCW PLC fall below the 75% and sell shares to a minimum of 50.1%. This resolution did not reach the 75% yes votes required by 3.83% and failed. This felt like a body blow to the DTB as the selling of shares would provide additional funds to pay down the PLB’s and reduce the yearly interest.

The first phase of PLB repayments were completed early this year, however this was supplemented by some PLB holders donating and referring their bonds for a further duration. It was made very clear that the club was able to pay the monies down to football fortune and the sale of over £6m worth of player sales and good runs in the cup completions. This is not sustainable or any way a business should be forecasting budgets for the forthcoming year or a 5-year budget.

That is the rough breakdown of what has happened over the last 9 months, and it feels that winning promotion to League One has forced the club and DTB’s hand to clearly detail to the members the challenges ahead. We have had many updates from the DTB, we had our Director of Football, PLC Chair and our Managing Director provide updates via the club website, club podcast and the popular podcast, The Price of Football. This has been overwhelming for many fans I speak to and some found it quite a shock the stark messaging of how competing in League One will stretch us and add in the PLB payments needed in 2027.

Whilst I am pleased that the messaging has been in some situations very blunt, they have also dampened the excitement of winning promotion and the natural buzz of playing in a higher league. I have attended every DT meeting held since we returned to Plough Lane and was not surprised by the messaging, however we have over 7k members now that can vote on resolutions and I am not as confident that messaging has reached them, especially as a good 30% of the members will be new with the decision for the club to provide membership to the DT with season tickets. This is also something I welcomed and commented in my 2022 blog that we need to ask the people who come week in, week out as season ticket holders and not just the members who back then paid the additional £25 to be a DT member.

The blunt messaging about our financial challenges needed to be launched way before the 50.1% vote last year and I believe that would have provided the extra votes needed for it to pass, and the now desperate messaging about finances has become frustrating and surprising to some. I have said for ages that our messaging on matchday at the ground does not suggest our ownership model or the challenges we have with PLB repayments. I would love to see posters, digital displays and other media formats with a financial thermometer showing monies owed and some strap-lines that fans can see in an around the stadium. I speak to many fans on the stadium tours, and I often have questions about when we are expanding the stadium and building new stands and the surprise the fans have when I inform them, we have not finished paying for the existing stands yet and owe around £9m still.

This coming Monday 11th August the members have a vote to make authorising the sale of some AFCW PLC shares that are being brought by a consortium headed up by John Green. The new limited liability company called Across the Dons Pond LLC, who John Green leads are set to acquire 3.7% of the club at $1.4m subject to approval at the meeting. John has been the back of shorts sponsor since the kingsmeadow days and recently have contributed further financially by providing funds to purchase Joe Lewis and Marcus Browne. This is an interesting shift and has now become even bigger with the purchase of 3.7% shares by the company he is heading up. John is highly respected by Wimbledon fans, and this was even more clear with the relative low reaction to him being involved in buying shares as I am confident anyone else doing this who was not known, would have come under scrutiny.

Whenever the DTB have been asked at meetings or on the discord channel about interest from people buying the remaining shares available and potentially the ones if we go to 50.1%, they have always been consistent saying they have not been instructed by fans to look, however they get regular approaches from people, but the stumbling block is what they get for there investment. Is this the start of additional shares for Across the Dons Pond LLC if we make more shares available?

The League One we return to after four years away is a different beast. Apparently, clubs were losing around £1m on average a year and now it is around £5m. Without football fortune, we are set to lose around £1.5m per year, however this was before we changed catering contracts and other excellent work by the club with other incoming streams. We were reportedly 14th in the League Two wages table last year and this year we will be bottom of League One. It shows that last year we overachieved in comparison with our wages against over clubs and this is what we do, however the financial gap is increasing year on year and whilst I appreciate there are some hopes that the recently passed Independent Regulator will help, how quickly it comes in and even if it makes any significant different is a waiting game.

I often hear that football is broken, and I agree, however we have got to start realising that its not going to be fixed any time soon, if at all and that as responsible owners, we need to start thinking about the next part of our story. Over the last year I have sensed a change of opinion from some fans I know who 100% fan-ownership were and would never entertain us looking for external investment, however times are changing. I am not sure reducing to 50.1% is the answer and it could make it even more difficult to sell the club completely. These are questions and opinions I am keen to hear before the next vote for 50.1% is launched, and lets be blunt, it will.

As mentioned in my 2022 blog about ownership I always felt moving to Plough Lane would bring up the ownership model as we would naturally attract new fans and the ownership model might not be the thing that attracts them. We have doubled our average attendance in 4 years at Plough Lane, regulary sell out the 9k capacity and have over 7k members. In general football fans want to see their team win and if you are a fan that does not want to know the ins and outs of the clubs ownership model and finances, they don’t care that can’t afford a player or we can’t compete. They will ask why are they paying a premium ticket price if we can’t use that to be competitive. Wimbledon always fight against the odds and what we have achieved by getting back into League One is remarkable, but its now becoming obvious with the DTB and club messaging that we need to make some tough choices.

I know we have benefited from donation and many schemes like Dons Draw and We Are Wimbledon fund, but I feel we now need to be grown up as owners and make decisions that might be unpopular but are necessary to keep growing. I don’t for one minute think that getting external inversions will mean we go to the Premier League in 5 years or do a Wrexham or Birmingham, but the idea that the football league only has bad owners is crazy and a weak argument whenever its said to me. You only have to look at clubs like Luton, Portsmouth and Wycombe who have similar models to us and the decisions they made and what they now have.

I have never been interested in our ownership model being a movement or something that we should be applauded for. It was needed at the time to reform and reclaim our club, but franchising has not happened since and we need to adjust and be realistic to what football is. Money dominates the game and as an owner I only have a certain budget that I want to spend on my hobby no matter how much this club means to me. The messaging recently has been that we are all owners and we need to act accordingly and fund the club.

That was ok for me in the non-league days, however we are now in with the big boys who think nothing of losing £1m a month and I am not sure we have many owners who could cover anything like that, let alone our yearly £1.5m losses

As always I am appreciative of people reading this and commenting - please feel free to leave your comments.