Arsenal Back New "Fanshare" Ownership Scheme

Guardian/David Conn

Arsenal step back from era of rich owners and offer fans a voice
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Arsenal supporters will be invited today to buy shares in their club in affordable slices of the £10,250, which is the current prohibitive price of just one. The Arsenal Supporters Trust hopes that its scheme, Arsenal Fanshare, five years in the planning, will enable supporters to slowly build a meaningful stake and voice, and help preserve Arsenal as the only major Premier League club not owned by a single rich individual.

"Custodianship" is the trust's cherished theme; the principle that a football club exists for its supporters, not for speculators to exploit by buying up shares. Arsenal Fanshare allows ordinary supporters to make monthly contributions, from a minimum of £10 to a maximum £1,000, which will be pooled towards buying shares when they become available.

Fans who contribute just one hundredth of a share's value – £102.50 at present – will become a Fanshare member, entitled to vote on club policy that requires shareholders' approval, receive financial and corporate information and have a chance of attending the annual general meeting.

Remarkably, Arsenal Fanshare is enthusiastically backed by the club itself, as a means of encouraging fans to be participate and be "engaged", which is emerging as a core principle at Arsenal and the more enlightened professional clubs. The contrast with the open warfare between fans and absolute owners at debt-laden Manchester United and Liverpool could hardly be more marked.

"In the club's relationship with supporters, the important thing is that fans are valued and nurtured, not exploited," Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal's chief executive, says. "That's not only good for the club's soul; it is also ultimately good for the club overall, because engagement with our fans helps us to be healthier, more vibrant and successful."

The trust accepts that the scheme does not herald a popular fans' takeover of the Gunners, given its current value of £640m, but its members have heartfelt ambitions for the effect the scheme could have.

"The aim is to increase supporter ownership and influence," Tim Payton, the spokesman for the trust, says. "The vast majority of our members and, we believe, most Arsenal fans, favour supporter involvement in the club and have no appetite for private ownership by a single individual, and certainly not for excessive debt. This is an opportunity for supporters to gain a voice, for a relatively modest contribution, and it should be a model for other clubs too."

Had the idea of mutual, democratic ownership been conceived, and the iconic examples of supporter-owned Barcelona and the Bundesliga clubs been understood 30 years ago, before the Premier League's pay-TV and commercial revolution, fans clubbing together might have had a chance of buying their clubs outright, even one as distinguished as Arsenal.

In 1983, Arsenal was valued at just £1.825m (0.003% of its current price), and David Dein was shrewd enough to buy 16% of the club then, for £292,000. It was an investment described with famously blurred vision as "dead money" by Arsenal's chairman then and now, Peter Hill-Wood.

Dein, ousted from the Arsenal board 24 years later, for encouraging the US investor Stan Kroenke to buy 9.9% of the club, then sold his own shares for an eye-watering £75m to Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-Russian billionaire. Usmanov's arrival, not welcomed generally by Arsenal fans, terrified Hill-Wood into reconsidering his previous antipathy to Kroenke, who was subsequently welcomed on to the Arsenal board, while Usmanov has been kept outside the inner circle.

The share dealing after that saw the other self-styled custodians, Hill-Wood included, making huge personal profits from selling their stakes. Danny Fiszman, previously the club's largest shareholder, made £42.5m by selling 8% of Arsenal last year to Kroenke – his lavish capital gain came tax free because he had relocated to Switzerland. Richard Carr, one of the upper-class shareholders whose long-standing family involvement made Arsenal unique, cashed in by more than £40m when he sold his stake to Kroenke last May. In November Hill-Wood, who sold the bulk of his own shareholding to Dein just before the Premier League breakaway and Sky TV money super-inflated their value, made £850,000 by selling most of his remaining stake, also to Kroenke.

Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith subsequently announced that she, too, was to sell her 16% stake, but no deal has been done so far because, most observers believe, £100m is a lot of money to spend for shares which would not give a buyer overall majority control.

It was that sudden flurry of buying, and the arrival first of Kroenke, then of Usmanov, at a club which, outwardly at least, had for decades presented the image of stability, which prompted supporters to act.

A general view among the fans that Arsenal are better served by maintaining a spread of shareholders, not being owned either by Kroenke or Usmanov, spurred the trust to develop Arsenal Fanshare, as a means of fans buying a stake even in these inflationary football times.

As significant as the idea of buying a stake – which will require a huge take-up to become influential given the vast price of shares – is the co-operation the trust has secured with the club. The club's endorsement, which will see Arsenal Fanshare explained in the match programme and displayed on the advertising hoardings as Arsène Wenger's team play the Premier League newcomers Blackpool on Saturday, means it has the blessing of board members Fiszman and Kroenke.

Usmanov, via his Arsenal acquisition company Red and White Holdings, has let it be known that he supports the principle of greater fan involvement in Arsenal, and Bracewell-Smith has also privately expressed the same sentiment.

Gazidis would not be drawn on Arsenal's ownership position, which is generally read as a stand-off between Usmanov and Kroenke, but the signs on both sides point to a continuing ceasefire, for now. Kroenke, who has bought 29.98% of Arsenal, a whisker under the 30% threshold at which he would have to make an offer for the whole club, is concentrating on buying the St Louis Rams NFL franchise. Allied to Fiszman on the board, he has effective control of Arsenal decision-making and half of the club's broadband venture, so a move for the whole club does not look likely.

Usmanov, cold-shouldered by many fans and the board and now busy with other interests including the Metalloinvest company in which he has a stake valued at US$10bn, is said by informed sources to be interested in increasing his 27% stake marginally but not in bidding for the club.

The backing all four major shareholders have given to Arsenal Fanshare does seem to reinforce that emerging stability; it makes it more difficult for anyone to launch a takeover bid, having just expressed approval for supporter ownership.

"It is hugely significant that all the major Arsenal shareholders have given their support and that suggests talk of a takeover can be put to one side," Payton argues. "We will be urging Arsenal fans to contribute to this in the spirit of custodianship."

A price of £640m puts a fans' takeover beyond their collective reach, but the partnership between club and supporters makes Arsenal appear enlightened compared to the debt-laden buyouts of their competitors


www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/aug/18/arsenal-kroenke-usmanov-owners-fanshare