Owners of football clubs

[12th Man]

How many people have actually become wealthy from owning a football club?

The norm seems to be, make your money elsewhere and then invest in a football club as more of a hobby than an investment and either invest heavily to buy success or use your wealth to act as a financial cushion in hard times helping out the club that you love.

Who has managed to become rich from it?

[Scotty]

has anyone ?

The same thing can be said about football clubs as airlines ...... "How do you become a millionaire ? ....... start of with a billion pounds and buy a football club / airline"

[TheKnowledge]

Fergus McCann.

[PullMyFinger]

Fergus McCann.

Who also left CFC in a much healthier state than he found it.

[CaleyD]

I don't think it's possible to "become" wealthy by owning a club because you need to be fairly wealthy to afford to buy one in the first place. Looking at it from the point of "How many people have made money from being Club Owners?", there's likely to be a few more than we think...although it will generally have happened indirectly.

I couldn't name specific people or clubs but some feasible scenarios would be....

• People who have bought failing clubs for a quid and sold them on further down the line,
  
• Then you have those who've removed stadium/land ownership from the club and have companies who are earning by way of rent and development.
  
• Owners who are/have also been employees drawing a salary could, over time, have had back more than they ever invested.
  
• Crooks who have used clubs for things like Money Laundering
  
• "Goodwill" where investors have been afforded opportunities in other business ventures through apparent generosity.
  
• Owners who have other business interests which provide paid services to clubs.
  

Most football clubs are fairly incestuous institutions in so far as, at any one time, there's only likely to be dealings between small groups of people/businesses when it comes to their day to day operation. This means that most of the money going out (aside from player wages and utilities bills etc) will be going to people who have put money in, or are connected to those who put money in.

Whilst most owners/major shareholders will always play the "My shares will never be worth more than I paid for them" card, they will, in many cases, be making some kind of earning elsewhere.

Nothing wrong with that, IMO, so long as the club is benefiting as much as everyone else who's taking/getting a slice of the action.

[TheKnowledge]

• People who have bought failing clubs for a quid and sold them on further down the line,
  

Ken Bates bought Chelsea for ?1.

[TopSix]

Sportsound were discussing Kilmarnock yesterday and chairman / MD Michael Johnston. Apparently he takes around 50k per annum which would place him in the top 1% of global earners. Hardly megabucks but compared to the average person, a good salary.

I think it tends to be more egotistical rather than altruistic reasons which drive people to become involved in football clubs at this level. Financial gain for most probably doesn't come in to the situtation. I always feel in the case of some of these oligarchs like Abramovic that it's like a real life game of subbuteo for them. Of course, there are other situtations like Romanov at Hearts which may be entirely different...

[Sorted]

Fergus McCann.

Made a lot of money out of Celtic and is detested by many. How many chairmen get booed as you unfurl the champions flag? Daft thing is he was the only one who wanted to play, delivered and still got pelters! Fans are strange.

[DALNEIGHCALEY]

David Murray has done well out of Rankers .

[Caley Stan]

Sometimes the power and influence that comes with owning a club means more to these guys that the actual money they may or may not make from the club directly.