How should I cast my MyFC vote?
Have you voted yet? MyFootballClub members, the 27,000+ strong English collective on the verge of purchasing English non-league team Ebbsfleet United, today received that question via email (I am a member myself).
We were told that:
If not, you have until tomorrow (Wednesday 23 January) at midday (UK time) to vote on whether to approve the deal to purchase a 75% stake in Ebbsfleet United. There is also a second vote on whether to enable Liam Daish to carry out any plans he has for the January transfer window.
I hope to post a longer analysis of where MyFC stands right now in a day or two after the decision is reached, but for now, I’d like to point to one positive take on the purchase, and one negative response.
1. The Independent’s Nick Harris (who has been a MyFC member since August, though this is not revealed in the piece) waxes on the commitment shown by some MyFC members:
Yet even before MyFC’s legion of disparate fans has actually bought Ebbsfleet, many have gone to extraordinary lengths – literal and metaphorical – to show support to a club most had not previously heard of. Josh Friedman, a 34-year-old lawyer from Boston known as “Friejose” on myfootballclub. co.uk forums, has already made three trips across the Atlantic for matches. He flew to England at the weekend to see Ebbsfleet play Histon. It was postponed. “No matter,” he said yesterday. “There’ll be other games.”
Harris continues by saying that the most contentious issue between the “old” fans and the new owners has been resolved: the matter of whether the manager should pick the team.
Arguably the most contentious issue in the MyFC project is the members’ right to pick the team. It caused friction with long-standing fans in particular, wary of newcomers with no knowledge of the club demanding control of who plays at left-back and whether two or three up front is the way to go. Animosity has subsided as old fans and new get acquainted.
So how will fans choose the team? Harris quotes Will Brooks, who has headed the MyFC project:
So how will it work, this team selection by 27,000 bosses? Will Brooks expects it to begin in March, after members have spent time studying the detailed ProZone stats that will be available on every player, and watched regular games – or highlights on the website. Members will vote on formation, then “drag and drop” players into place, with the majority view implemented.
Daish, 39, a self-confessed “old school” manager, has every right to shudder at the prospect, but he was relaxed yesterday in telling The Independent that he is taking a “suck it and see” approach. “But, ultimately, team selection will be the members’ choice, that’s part of the deal,” he added, insisting that “properly informed decisions” would be the key. “Hopefully, it will work out.”
Harris does get to the financial aspect of the deal, including the stadium and possible redevelopment, at the end of the article:
A minority have made public their “no” vote on the grounds that MyFC is a “flawed model” and the £635,000 Ebbsfleet buyout is poor value. Most of the cash will go to creditors, including the board, in return for 75 per cent of the shares. MyFC will not own the stadium, although there is a guaranteed 18-year lease at peppercorn rent on the current ground, or training ground. The club are also losing between £26,000 and 28,000 a month. On the flip side, many clubs from League Two downwards lose that much money, and have bigger debt, and would have cost £1m or more to buy. “If we had 200,000 members and £5m in the kitty, we’d have had more choice,” Brooks said. “But this, I honestly believe, is the best deal, and a good one.”
2. Long-time critics of MyFC, such as Ian at 200percent, looked through the takeover proposal sent to members before the vote and he argues it’s rather too short on clarity and actual detail:
It is a most peculiar read, coming across as being more like an advertising pamphlet than giving any real information to MyFC members to enable to them make up their own minds on whether to vote in favour of or against the proposal to buy the controlling share in Ebbsfleet United. The opening section confirms that MyFC are to buy a 75% share in the club, and explains that the legal firm DLA Piper have carried out due diligence and created documents and, somewhat confusingly (given that they name the legal firm) an anonymous accountancy firm to carry out due financial diligence. They also state that they are unable, for legal reasons, to publish the results of the due diligences in full. [..]
Next, it’s onto the sales pitch. What is noticeably missing from the “plus points” listed to MyFC members is what the benefits or potential benefits are to existing supporters of Ebbsfleet United. We see a lot about how good it will be for “the club” (ie, the new and existing owners) and how good it will be for the local area (the club sponsors, Eurostar, aren’t mentioned by name, but they must be thrilled with all the news coverage an area that they have recently poured millions of pounds into is now getting). There are also a couple of interesting references to Ebbsfleet’s tatty but homely Stonebridge Road stadium. In one breath, it is described as “small, but [with] bags of character”, and that it “can apparently be fairly easily upgraded to league standard if the club is promoted” (almost all Conference grounds are practically League standard, by the way – a rash of clubs didn’t get promoted from it in the 1980s and 1990s after falling foul of the Football League’s regulations and the Conference reacted to this by tightening its own rules so much that, for a while, you had to have a better ground to get into the Conference than you needed to get into the League), but in the next it talks loftily about “the fact that the local area is being re-developed means that there is a good prospect that a new stadium will be built for the club, free of charge”.
“There is a good prospect that a new stadium will be built for the club, free of charge”? I thought that this was poor, impoverished Ebbsfleet, with no cash, small crowds and desperate enough to try anything to keep themselves alive. What is becoming apparent is that there is more to this than had originally met the eye. There is a lot of talk about “regeneration”, “opportunity” and, of course, “highly confidential”. There’s a lot of talk about property, generally. Interpret that as you choose.
Myself, I am a little bemused and confused by some of the wording in the full statement 200percent quotes from, having read through it. I don’t think I’m particularly dense — but frankly, I feel like I need a lawyer to help me parse through it so I can cast my vote confidently.
My feeling is that this speaks to a serious problem this project has — it takes an awful lot of commitment and trust in the people running this to feel confident in this takeover being for the good of the members, the existing fans, and the club. I don’t have that confidence, and so I’ll be voting no to the takeover.
What’s your view?
A few random thoughts on the MyFC project…
1) I don’t see how MyFC buying a club is any more for or against the interests of existing fans than the Glazers buying Manchester United, Roman Abramovich buying Chelsea, or Thaksin Shinawatra buying Manchester City. Inevitably there will be conflict between the good of the existing fans who are local and investors in the club. Should MyFC leverage more money from local government for new grounds so that the club can spend the savings on the transfer market? Local fans may feel differently than MyFC investors. I think that kind of tension is inevitable. As a MyFC member you can come down anyway you wish in the voting.
2) The only concern I would have about the due diligence is the lack of disclosure of the accounting firm. Perhaps DLA Piper (a legit firm) can issue a statement on behalf of MyFC explaining the legal reasons why the accounting firm has to remain anonymous. I found more on the concept of ‘due diligence’ in UK law at the website below if you are interested.
http://www.rohs.gov.uk/content.aspx?id=7
I’d vote to buy Ebbsfleet United if I had a share but your desire for more transparency in the purchase and clarity in the goals of the founders of the project is understandable. I’d like to see a more trustworthy open source not-for-profit templet developed for this kind of fan-based club purchase. And without the ‘no manager’ gimmick. I believe it would be very popular to combine the funds of global fans via the internet with local supporters to have more supporter-owned clubs. Supporters aren’t looking to extract value from a team like for-profit investors and I think culturally that is a far better model for clubs, community and the sport.
Good luck.
As you know, I have a fundamental issue with the entire concept of “playing Championship Manager with human beings”, and am therefore opposed as a matter of principle, so it really doesn’t matter what I think.
That said, the lack of transparency that you and joe note does trouble me, as does what I think are at best tenuous stretches of the concepts of “legal restrictions” and “confidentiality”. As I’ve said elswhere, I don’t understand the basis for a legal regime that on the one hand apparently requires a vote on whether or not to enter into the agreement from each member of the Trust and on the other hand (allegedly) prevents them from receiving a copy of the agreement they are voting on.
For that reason, I am highly suspect of the claim that “Legally we are unable to publish . . . transaction documents”. They should at a minimum be available to any member who requests them.
I am also swayed by the strong opinion of two people who I respect a great deal and who know infinitely more about non-League football in England than I do, both of whom find the description of Ebbsfleet’s current situation to be risible spin.
So that would be a No from me, then.
Template for fan-based purchase you say? Why not speak to people trying to do it for the last 8 years?
http://www.supporters-direct.org
And for Harris not to cite his own involvement in MyFC is very, very poor indeed.
The problem I’ve always had with the MyFootballClub venture is largely with the media — not just with the way the story has been reported, but with the way everything about it has been carefully tailored to fit into certain broad categories that the press tend to fall back on whenever they’re reporting a story about the internet. I made a joke on The Run of Play about how I’d buy a share if I could save my Firefox bookmarks on the Ebbsfleet shirt, because you could almost confuse the media coverage of MyFootballClub with coverage of a social-bookmarking site.
The tone is always this wide-eyed, gosh-gee surprise at how the internet makes everything possible (“Ever Wanted to Own a Football Club? Now You Can!”), and the narratives are always unwittingly ironic combinations of, on the one hand, delight in the rise of collective amateurism over individual expertise, and on the other hand, glorification of whatever bright young genius made this possible. (I think we’ve definitely seen this with Will Brooks.) There will be, three-quarters of the way through the piece, a nod to the fact that not everyone thinks the new venture is a good idea. You can guess how much persuasive force it will have.
The trouble with these narratives is that they’re so simplistic and one-size-fits-all that they never do justice to the individual complexities of a particular story, and things like what’s best for the Ebbsfleet supporters barely get covered at all. If you dig, sure, you can find more analytic columns, but the main front-page New York Times-type coverage that will be all that 95% of people ever see will roughly follow the familiar outlines. And they’re so familiar, and so many people have already bought into them (we all love the internet), that they tend to shut down critical thinking, and for a lot of people the question is answered almost before it’s even asked.
I think this media loop has been in place for a long time on subjects ranging from the future of the music industry to the rise of user-based customer support, and I think the MyFootballClub people took advantage of it—structured their venture in such a way, and released information about it in such a way, that it would lend itself to this sort of treatment in the press. More than anything else (although I share Ursus’s concern for playing video games with human beings) I find that alienating and manipulative, and it makes me suspicious of the project, even though it doesn’t quite condemn it.
In any case, thanks for this post, Tom. It’s useful to see these arguments side by side, and to see the thought process that’s leading you to join what will surely be a small minority voting no.
In response to Dave:
MyFootballClub have had dealings with Supporters Direct. I raised this issue with the web team of the site early on in the process and I was told that they’d already taken advice from them.
As for Nick Harris, is it not possible that his paper have paid for a membership so that they can get the ‘inside story’ on MyFC? The Telegraph has stated that it’s bought a share for precisely this reason, so Harris may not necessarily be an active member.
For what it’s worth, the MYFC website is now stating that the Yes vote on Issue 1 (the takeover) carries, at 95.89%. Of the 27,278 MYFC members (that’s the first time we’ve gotten that figure), 18,112 actually voted and 17,368 members are in favor.
17,152 out of 17,891 members (95.86%) voted Yes on issue 2 – whether to enable Liam Daish to carry out any plans he has for the January transfer window. 95.86%.
So the project will roll on at Ebbsfleet.
Thanks for the update, Metrologist. Not surprised to find I was in the minority.
I agree with most of the points raised, and if there’s a vote on it, I’ll also be voting for the manager to continue to pick the team. I am not opposed to internet supporter ownership in the abstract — but I don’t think it has been done right in this case so far.
David, I hope Dave will be back with more details on the Supporters’ Direct issue, but my understanding is that the consultation has been more lipgloss than substance.
In terms of Nick Harris, we don’t know why he became a member, but he could just have noted it was for research purposes to avoid an appearance of partiality. Since the article, he’s been very chatty on the forums with the members about what he wrote, though he is very avid in asserting he’d written a balanced piece.
If Supporters Direct had contacted by MyFC, I’m pretty sure that Dave (that’s Dave, not David) would have been aware of this. I’m just saying, like.
Another thing that I don’t quite follow (of which, as one or two of you may have noticed,there are many) is how undemocratic the vote actually was. Imagine holding a general election in which, instead of there being prime ministerial several candidates, but that you weren’t allowed to vote on all of them – just one that had been chosen, after due diligence, by a self-elected committee. A vote is then held on whether you want the one selected to be the prime minister or not. If the answer is yes, they get the job. If no, the committee go back out and try to find another one that they approve of. There’s no legal or “confidentiality” reason whatsoever why the other candidate clubs couldn’t have been listed, and an open vote held. I thought, after all, that IPSs were supposed to be about transparency in their dealings. MyFC has got a funny idea of what democracy is.
One more thing: if the board at Ebbsfleet is stepping down, who replaces them and how are they voted for? Or (and this is just a hunch), will Mr Brookes decide who these people will be unilaterally?
I’m not sure I understand you, Tom – and I definitely don’t understand Ian, Ian, and ursus. (Or are the two Ians the same?)
There are two legal entities: a for-profit company and a not-for-profit society. In essence, the for-profit company runs the website, and is the agent to purchase a club for the not-for-profit society. The 35 pounds is divided 7.50 to the for-profit, 27.50 to the not-for-profit. The agent is giving the members of the not-for-profit society the opportunity to approve its work. It’s there in the rules, Ian and ursus; it has nothing to do with being undemocratic or opaque. And this was spelled out in the legal documents before Tom sent in his money, so he could have refused to join.
There *are* legal reasons for not having information from other clubs – clubs insisted on initial data being held confidential, and only Ebbsfleet agreed to undergo the due diligence designed to unearth any hidden obligations/debts. Imagine being one of the non-Ebbsfleet clubs – why would you allow your data to be public (i.e. given to those journalists who have signed up as MyFC members) if you weren’t reasonably sure the purchase would go through?
And the stadium…why does Ian@200% assume that a new stadium would be owned by Ebbsfleet? EPL clubs own their own stadia because they can afford to and they see it as profitable; there’s no need or profit for Ebbsfleet to own a stadium, hence the alternate goal of “free of charge”. Does Ebbsfleet own Stonebridge Road? No. Did they pay for any of it? I understand they’ve paid some of the modifications, but that’s part of the tradeoff for having a relatively small rent.
What do the existing supporters get? What do they ever get in a sale of their club? In this case, they get a 95+% chance of having all the club debt paid off by January 2010. If they’re so inclined, they’ll start saving for the existing Ebbsfleet Supporters Trust to buy the club dirt-cheap if MyFC fails. (Since the not-for-profit society can’t profit – the sale proceeds will go to charity – MyFC or the administrator don’t have to sell the team to the highest bidder.) If they’re not inclined, they can join MyFC, and a good number already have.
And if the polar bear doesn’t believe that yahoos like me should select a team, he correctly chose not to participate. But he should look again at how many agreed to give Daish the right to spend money without approval of individual purchases. In fact, he should know that one of the long-running disputes on the website is that the members who want to choose who’s playing are afraid that many of us (like me!) will simply approve whatever team selection Daish wants to make for the more-than-near future. Shame that he can’t be bothered to tell us what the “risible spin” is.
Sending in my 105 pounds (three years) has been interesting, all right, just to see how much people assume…
Sorry, Alex, but where did I say that Ebbslfeet would “own” their new stadium? I’ll answer the question for you – I didn’t. And I don’t see what the ownership of Stonebridge Road has to do with the matter, either. All I know for certain is that if they had owned their own ground, they would have been too expensive for MyFC to contemplate looking at.
I’m not going to say what I think is going on over this whole issue publicly because it would be fairly libellous. I will say, however, that whilst MyFC the Trust is not for profit, MyFC the company has no such restrictions, and MyFC the Trust has a contract written into its user agreement to exclusively use MyFC the company for some services.
As regards the due diligence, my understanding of the situation last November was that MyFC were all set to sign a deal with one club, only for Ebbsfleet to be announced a couple of days later. If the other clubs weren’t made public because they refused to undergo due diligence, then fair enough – but that wasn’t the reason given in the release accompanying the vote.
I’ll also take the opportunity to ask these questions again, since you seem to have ignored them last time around: If the board at Ebbsfleet is stepping down, who replaces them and how are they voted for? Or (and this is just a hunch), will Mr Brookes decide who these people will be unilaterally?
My view is that people have gotten too bogged down with the intricacies of the deal. They’ve invested £35, not their life savings!
As a MyFC member, I read through the proposal once and then voted Yes immediately.
I’m not a lawyer nor an accountant, so if they said that after due diligence, this was the best deal we could get, then I take their word for it.
Existing Ebbsfleet fans are understandably cautious of the takeover but many will recognise that there was no way the club could continue in its current capacity to support full-time players.
In answer to one of the questions above, a new board is being selected shortly. Members of MyFC can put themselves forward for consideration and as I don’t have all the details, I’m assuming that they will be voted in.
Anyway, enough of my rambling, I’m happy with the deal, I can’t wait to go to see my first match. Onwards and upwards!
For that reason, I am highly suspect of the claim that “Legally we are unable to publish . . . transaction documents”. They should at a minimum be available to any member who requests them.
No, that can’t be done, at least not in a practical way. Confidentiality agreements would have to be struck with anyone wishing to review the transaction and due diligence documents, and even then the documents would have to be kept under tight wraps – probably by having members come and visit a data room where documents are kept, but not by sending out copies or making them available electronically. Far too much risk of leakage.
Agreements will likely become somewhat more widely available to members (under confidentiality restrictions) once the sale actually closes.
I can understand that with diligence, but not with regard to the transaction documents that you are asking people to vote on.
This is all nonsense. There is (or, rather, should be) no need for such secrecy with an Industrial & Provident Society where its transactions are concerned. After all, an Industrial & Provident Society is a non-profit organisation. I mean: “having members come and visit a data room where documents are kept, but not by sending out copies or making them available electronically”? Is there no part of you that feels as if this might be a little, well, excessive?
MyFC met Supporters Direct last summer; SD rejected their idea, and didn’t endorse it. To then call a rejection of their idea ‘advice’ is somewhat misleading I think as it suggest an engagement. It’s a bit like saying a burglar received ‘advice’ on consumer goods from a homeowner. But I’m sure it was an honest mistake on MyFC’s part.