Stadium Purchase

[Derry Drummer]

As a supports group I feel that a good idea would be to fundraise and purchase the stadium. This would allow us to forever have some control over things. 

[Les Barr legend]

Don’t think it’s so much the purchase that’s the problem, more the upkeep of it. Could we afford to keep it up to legal standards and pay the bills on it?

[Billy Campbell's Ghost]

No thanks. I cannot contribute. We only raised £250k at last Admin . So  how could we possibly do this? 

[HK Blues]

17 hours ago, Derry Drummer said:

As a supports group I feel that a good idea would be to fundraise and purchase the stadium. This would allow us to forever have some control over things. 

How would that fit in with the new stadium plans?  If a fans group is going to buy the stadium then they'd need to buy the whole club surely, why would FPS continue to support the football club if it wasn't going to play at their new project?

I very much doubt our fanbase has deep enough pockets to buy Dens, never mind upgrade and then maintain it.

 

[Kerso]

The ground is crumbling around us wouldn't be very prudent to buy it I reckon

Maybe should have done this years ago

[Derry Drummer]

17 hours ago, Billy Campbell's Ghost said:

No thanks. I cannot contribute. We only raised £250k at last Admin . So  how could we possibly do this? 

Then don't? No one is asking you solely to be the provider of funds mates. 

[Derry Drummer]

37 minutes ago, HK Blues said:

How would that fit in with the new stadium plans?  If a fans group is going to buy the stadium then they'd need to buy the whole club surely, why would FPS continue to support the football club if it wasn't going to play at their new project?

I very much doubt our fanbase has deep enough pockets to buy Dens, never mind upgrade and then maintain it.

 

We wouldn't need to own it. We would be the landlord. 

If we moved stadium we would sell and we would have a pot. 

[Billy Pirie]

I think the biggest obstacle to this is the apathy that has set in throughout a large section of the support added to a lot of sacrifices that were made in the past that people don't have the appetite for now. During the last admin I was in the fortunate position that I could contribute more to the cause than I had done in Admin 1. It wasn't a huge amount but probably ran into a couple of hundred quid or so. I made the commitment cause I felt I was helping to save my club. I have to say any contribution made now to buying the stadium would be very small, based purely on the fact that we would be helping out owners who despite having done a terrific job in bringing stability to the club financially have done nothing to foster relationships with those fans who saved us from going under twice.

[harry94]

I think the club have kind of killed external fundraising with their own foundation thing.

If the new ground does get off the ground, one of the ways DFCSS could play it would be to set up a fundraising model to actually buy shares in the holding company of the new stadium. They would try to get this in place after an agreement with the club on share price etc, the club would likely get themselves a good deal out of this and although relationships have been strained, the prospect of another 6 figure cash sum going onto the books each season would probably be too appealing to ignore.

The effect of that would be that if things did go t*ts up at some point into the future, the supporters society wouldn't be starting from 0 and they'd have some leverage over the important asset (even if 100% ownership isn't realistic). If it was running for a decade or so, it could be quite a significant amount and maybe also attract some bigger donations.

You could play around with that and also focus on the current ground or a general infrastructure fund.

I admit though, it would take a lot of very good diplomats and whilst I think there are people who are capable of doing that, I think there's a lot of sh*t they'd need to wade through to get there that would be too detrimental a load on someone for me to wish!

[Billy Campbell's Ghost]

8 hours ago, Derry Drummer said:

Then don't? No one is asking you solely to be the provider of funds mates. 

Dinner be daft, you get my point.

[Derry Drummer]

2 hours ago, Billy Campbell's Ghost said:

Dinner be daft, you get my point.

Of course mate. 

But we need to think outside the box. 

[Derry Drummer]

10 hours ago, Billy Pirie said:

I think the biggest obstacle to this is the apathy that has set in throughout a large section of the support added to a lot of sacrifices that were made in the past that people don't have the appetite for now. During the last admin I was in the fortunate position that I could contribute more to the cause than I had done in Admin 1. It wasn't a huge amount but probably ran into a couple of hundred quid or so. I made the commitment cause I felt I was helping to save my club. I have to say any contribution made now to buying the stadium would be very small, based purely on the fact that we would be helping out owners who despite having done a terrific job in bringing stability to the club financially have done nothing to foster relationships with those fans who saved us from going under twice.

But this would be OUR stadium. We would have a decent chance at making a future.