Should Bradford go into admistration, what would people's thoughts be on it being bought out by a pool of fans.



I remember reading some time ago about a group of fans puchasing Ebbsfleet United. I have looked into this and they are now in their 5th year of ownership of the club.



You can view on myfootballclub.com how the system works.



In brief, the members own the club and pay a membership fee which helps fund the club (currently £4.99 per month). Its members vote for a Board to run the club each year, any member can put himself/herself up for election.



The board then proceed with the general day to day running of the club.



All members then get to vote on things such as coaching appointments, playing roster, kit design and supply, ticket pricing so on and so forth.



I think a name as huge a Bradford Bulls would be an amazing club for RL fans to do this with and would be a great way for fans to get involved with RL.



Thoughts?

I think this would work better if they did it for the RFL.

The Supporters Trust (Bullbuilder?) would have been the vehicle to achieve this; they appear to have opted instead to support the existing BoD's begging bowl strategy, in an attempt to stave off administration and allow the incumbents to execute their otherwise excellent business plan 'going forward.'

Without wishing to be patronising to Ebbsfleet - what's their turnover and how many full-time employees do they have?

Lets cut the ill-informed sarcasm, eh? It's beneath you, and extremely disappointing. I would have thought much better of you.



Read the BullBuilder statement.



There was no way we could do anything in the time frame. In fact, we would almost certainly have made it much worse, in the ridiculously-tight time frame available - split the rescue effort and sown confusion. There are no shares available for purchase anyway, so what precisely would you have had us do? And we judged that the existence of a block of shares owned by supporters would be an impediment to anyone looking to take over the club anyway. As things stand.



If the worst happens, then we have a ready-made vehicle that COULD be used. And at short order if required, and provided a lot more pairs of hands volunteered. Anyone thinking of starting from scratch - it would take you months to get a vehicle set up. But until and unless the situation changes, such there IS something the supporters can do, our conclusion after a hell of a lot of consideration was that we could see no available alternative that we could pursue in the time available.



But don't anyone be under any illusions regarding just what a massive undertaking it would be, for anyone, if the opportunity DID present itself. And just how much compliance is involved. You'd need a team of full-time people on the case for a protracted period.



Frankly, I am getting pretty sick and tired of being lectured by some Wakey supporters, whose club was saved by a wealthy benefactor in a scenario rather different to and simpler than ours in many respects. And, in particular, about what a Supporters' Trust "should do" when they were never in the position of having to actually do it themselves.



Posted in a personal capacity only.

You're getting too touchy Adey; it wasn't sarcasm or a lecture - just calling it as I see it.

What part of "...otherwise excellent business plan 'going forward.' " wasn't sarcastic?

All of it apart from the 'going forward' bit - whenever someone uses that expression, I automatically assume they're lying.

Can't run a business by (huge) committee, though. Even John lewis does not attempt it.

What about the 170,000 members at Barcelona then?

Could be wrong here but becouse barcalona and real Madrid, to the same extent, are owned by the fans the spanish government subsidise them! they defo do with real Madrid, hence why they can still operate when they are very heavily in debt!

They wisely distinguish between ownership and management. As does any successful employee- owned or supporter- owned business.