fc united

A model for Us?
Which pipe dream financed their stadium

When my village team ,Eccleshall played them in the NW counties league we had to hire Stafford Ranger's ground to cope with the number of fans they brought but the receipts kept us in the black for some time .Up there they played at Gigg Lane ,Bury and came into being with the fans being disenchanted with the Glazier take over.P.S We drew 0-0!

With the judicial review over and the lease signed, FC United have to complete their fund raising during the build. The development fund target was originally £500,000 with fans having raised £446,000 at the time of the planning decision – but £250,000 of this had been spent on that planning procedure. The overall cost of the Moston scheme is higher than originally planned at Ten Acres Lane and the development fund target is now £600,000. A community share scheme target is now also £100,000 higher at £1.6m – with £1.3m raised before the scheme was put on hold following the uncertainty of the original proposal. The club had applied for grants in the region of £1.5m, with £650,000 originally agreed by the City Council, plus a further £850,000 coming from the Football Foundation, Sport England & other grant bodies.

The current funding package is in place to raise the £5.5m required:-

£1,600,000 FC United Community Shares scheme (target reached on 16 March 2012)
£300,000 Development Fund (£486,000 raised, but £250,000+ spent on fees – a further £114,000 to raise)
£550,000 Manchester City Council (approved January 2012)
£750,000 Sport England (Iconic facilities fund, stage one approval given. Funding approved in principle December 2011)
£150,000 Football Foundation Stadia Improvement Fund (approved)
£500,000 Football Foundation Community Facilities Fund (approved)
£300,000 Government grant, Community Assets and Services Fund (announced January 2014)
up to £500,000 Manchester City Council loan (approved January 2012 to bridge any funding gap if required).

and the share scheme was EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) so you got tax relief on the investment

Fleetwood is financial doping. I'd rather look at AFC Wimbledon & FCUM as examples to follow...

Yes - they are well on the way to being a league club.  Being properly based in Manchester should help boost their attendances and they've been quite canny about not trying to run before they can walk.  They have run a pretty skeleton operation and prioritised getting the ground built before trying to kick on.  They've been happy to tread water in the Northern Premier League for a few season and are now well placed for a big push over the next few years to reach the Conference.  The key I think will be whether they tap into a latent interest in Manchester for regularly attending football matches when they reach that level; that will determine whether they will be viable as a league club.  Many people do not go to watch United or City because they can't afford it so only go occasionally and therefore there is a market out there for that I think for a club that has the right image.  The higher they go the bigger their profile will be as well which can't hurt.  Another club that is trying to do something similar but in far less favourable conditions is Darlington who look well placed to get promotion to the same league as FC United; I have a friend who is on their management board.  I'm not the world's biggest supporter of fan owned clubs (saw close at hand at Notts County what a disaster it can be in the wrong scenario) but it seems as though there might be the beginnings of the kind of critical mass you might need in order to make them more competitive and therefore a more viable model.

It's odd that the assumption would be that FC United is doing damage to Bury, Rochdale etc.  The 2 manchester giants have always been the biggest threat to those clubs and the damage has probably already been done.  I can't imagine FC United would be any threat whatsoever to the smaller greater manchester clubs in comparison; there are more Man City pubs in Stockport than there are County ones for example.  Whereas no one in Rochdale is going to chose to watch FC United over Rochdale FC etc.  The point is that within the City of Manchester itself there is definitely scope for a 3rd side that people could afford to watch regularly.  Of course by it's nature it will only draw from the United elements but there is a genuine potential fanbase out there.

I don't think people fully understand the purpose of FC United; it is still generally perceived as a protest club for disgruntled and alienated United supporters.  That's only a small part of the reality because as a concept it's evolved well beyond that; the vast majority of people who run and support them still support Manchester United and some still go to watch them.  What FC United has largely become is a way of providing a football experience that has been lost, diluted or become unaffordable to a huge number of United fans in Manchester; the chance to go and watch a team on a regular basis home and away.  To experience regular live football and to have a genuine connection and relationship with a club rather than merely being a customer of the club.  They took that sense of protest and turned it into a much bigger positive question; what is the football fan experience that we want? FC United is an ongoing attempt to achieve that.

Not quite as goods as the deal Man City got (with Gasheads' tax money, too).