Lincoln City

Quoted from nealeardleyscrossing

I am not sure if you are just being negative because it is Lincoln or not, but the population has grown by 30k in 20 years in Lincoln and continues to grow, so I think crowds, whilst lower this year have remained stable and may well do so. I don't think it is just because we are not playing that well that crowds have dipped, the economic climate will play a part. Lincoln is also a growing city, that has significant investment and lower crime so is an attractive place currently. I personally think the football club have seen this and tried to grow with it - With some success, and changes to the ground/pitch and training facilities which put us on an even keel with a lot of L1 clubs.

As for investment and going down the same root as Scunthorpe, I think that must be a joke - we will be nothing like them, we might dip to L2 occasionally, and flirt with the championship at times, but we are in safe hands. Investment is in shares, and Clive appears to be careful with who invests in the club - The Jabara family seem to be in for the long haul, so whilst I see some on here wanting us to go pop, I  think we will be fine.

Football wise, losing all our forwards to injury has been a freak, with Tyler Walker now ruled out for the season we have had some awful luck, so to be 9th I think we have done well, albeit it is a dull watch scoring a goal a game. However, I much prefer watching Derby away Thursday, and Bolton at home Boxing day than watching some of L2's fixtures. No being salty here towards Grimsby, I think Artell is a decent appointment - Your owners are good too, but if you think you are going to sail past us, without Millions of wise investment I think you are mistaken. I actually wish you good fortune, I like Lincolnshire clubs being in the league and doing well, so long as were doing the best!

Anyway Merry Xmas!!

Not negative at all.

You can cut the numbers anyway you want really.  The population of NEL has decreased in the last 10 years yet attendances have increased considerably, that's without any real success. There's no two ways about it, the club are in the same position they were 19 years ago and no amount of promotions from the fifth tier will wash with anyone over the age of 25/30 as 'success'.  Anyone over that age grew up with Town more than capable of operating at the third and second tiers.  Rightly or wrongly that is their standard and benchmark, as ridiculous as it sounds in the modern game.  

Lincoln is clearly a growing city, as evidenced by the fact it's flipping impossible to get to anywhere at anything other than snail pace, but your attendance has only increased on the back of quite considerable success in terms of reaching a level very few of your fan base will have seen, certainly for a sustained period anyway.  Potentially I would say Town could get more fans in if both clubs were operating at the same level.  The key word is could.  Our ground wouldn't allow it and potential is worth jaff all without the ability to convert it into something.

Back to you and your investors though, the question for me is still why?  Why on earth would anyone pump money into a club for the sake of it.  You don't make money from football and the ramblings of your Sincil Bank friend just scream 'it'll be ok because they said it will'.    There has to be a reason they're involved.

Quoted Text

“Again, it was a pure football investment. So many of the investments we looked at were simply were ‘here’s a real estate opportunity around a stadium’, or ‘we’re trying to do a major enhancement around our venue’ and ‘we have a football club too but let’s talk about this real estate investment’.

“But we probably have enough real estate investments in the US. We probably don’t need to go to the UK for a real estate investment.

“We’re going to the UK because that’s where the best football in the world is made.

They're the words of Harvey Jabara, your US bankroller.  It's a football investment. So they feel the football club itself has something they can invest it and get a return on.  That means they eventually think someone is going to come in and give them a return on their investment.  I've seen a quote from Jabara where he says stuff about long-term, not flipping his investment etc.  If that's the case then he's not really investing is he, it's throwing money away with the knowledge that he isn't getting anything back on it...which is fine.  So why constantly use the term 'investment'.  

How much have his family invested in the club and then add a good percentage onto that for a return.  Do you think anyone is going to buy his shares for that value?  This probably is the negative bit but it just doesn't add up to me.  I will be as cautious when 1878 come to getting outside investment in here and ask the question of what is it going to cost us in the long run.  

I've not got any issue with football clubs getting investment.  I just can't for the life of me see the value of investing in a lower league football team to the tune of considerable millions.  If it's costing that amount of money to get you to the top half of League One, what's it going to cost to get to the Championship and then a position of stability (where you're then probably only remotely interesting to other investment groups)?

Look at the average attendances in that league - https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/championship/attendances

It's scary.  Even the second lowest averages are almost double what you're pulling in.  Just on ticket sales alone that's around £2.5mill the likes of Blackburn, Preston, Millwall have over you.  Those clubs that are in the middle of the attendance table you can double that amount.   Do these guys have £5million upwards a season just to be remotely competitive at this level?  

Even then, do you invest in Lincoln with a stadium that has limited potential or a club like Rotherham with a bigger ground, even a basketcase club like Reading with a huge stadium and far more potential?  I know where my money would go (if I was daft enough to expect a return on a football club).

Believe me. We'll be in exactly the same position when it comes to 1878 moving on.  We're not a good investment.  1878 themselves are probably shocked at how much of a money drain a football club is and we've generated bonus income in the last 24 months or so.  

It might be that Jabara and his family genuinely just want to throw money at it to give you guys the best chance of succeeding.  I hope that's the case.  But if they step away, who plugs the £3million a year sized hole?

Quoted from diehardmariner

Not negative at all.

You can cut the numbers anyway you want really.  The population of NEL has decreased in the last 10 years yet attendances have increased considerably, that's without any real success. There's no two ways about it, the club are in the same position they were 19 years ago and no amount of promotions from the fifth tier will wash with anyone over the age of 25/30 as 'success'.  Anyone over that age grew up with Town more than capable of operating at the third and second tiers.  Rightly or wrongly that is their standard and benchmark, as ridiculous as it sounds in the modern game.  

Lincoln is clearly a growing city, as evidenced by the fact it's flipping impossible to get to anywhere at anything other than snail pace, but your attendance has only increased on the back of quite considerable success in terms of reaching a level very few of your fan base will have seen, certainly for a sustained period anyway.  Potentially I would say Town could get more fans in if both clubs were operating at the same level.  The key word is could.  Our ground wouldn't allow it and potential is worth jaff all without the ability to convert it into something.

Back to you and your investors though, the question for me is still why?  Why on earth would anyone pump money into a club for the sake of it.  You don't make money from football and the ramblings of your Sincil Bank friend just scream 'it'll be ok because they said it will'.    There has to be a reason they're involved.



They're the words of Harvey Jabara, your US bankroller.  It's a football investment. So they feel the football club itself has something they can invest it and get a return on.  That means they eventually think someone is going to come in and give them a return on their investment.  I've seen a quote from Jabara where he says stuff about long-term, not flipping his investment etc.  If that's the case then he's not really investing is he, it's throwing money away with the knowledge that he isn't getting anything back on it...which is fine.  So why constantly use the term 'investment'.  

How much have his family invested in the club and then add a good percentage onto that for a return.  Do you think anyone is going to buy his shares for that value?  This probably is the negative bit but it just doesn't add up to me.  I will be as cautious when 1878 come to getting outside investment in here and ask the question of what is it going to cost us in the long run.  

I've not got any issue with football clubs getting investment.  I just can't for the life of me see the value of investing in a lower league football team to the tune of considerable millions.  If it's costing that amount of money to get you to the top half of League One, what's it going to cost to get to the Championship and then a position of stability (where you're then probably only remotely interesting to other investment groups)?

Look at the average attendances in that league - https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/championship/attendances

It's scary.  Even the second lowest averages are almost double what you're pulling in.  Just on ticket sales alone that's around £2.5mill the likes of Blackburn, Preston, Millwall have over you.  Those clubs that are in the middle of the attendance table you can double that amount.   Do these guys have £5million upwards a season just to be remotely competitive at this level?  

Even then, do you invest in Lincoln with a stadium that has limited potential or a club like Rotherham with a bigger ground, even a basketcase club like Reading with a huge stadium and far more potential?  I know where my money would go (if I was daft enough to expect a return on a football club).

Believe me. We'll be in exactly the same position when it comes to 1878 moving on.  We're not a good investment.  1878 themselves are probably shocked at how much of a money drain a football club is and we've generated bonus income in the last 24 months or so.  

It might be that Jabara and his family genuinely just want to throw money at it to give you guys the best chance of succeeding.  I hope that's the case.  But if they step away, who plugs the £3million a year sized hole?

Lincoln are chasing the dream - nowt wrong with ambition - but any imps fan who simply washes over their current cash drain situation needs to give their head a wobble. IF they get to The Championship, just bear in mind that Bristol City -  substantially bigger club than either Lincoln or ourselves - need pulling out of the sh#t every season by their owner to the tune of around £15-25m - that’s not far off 5-10 times what Lincoln are currently doing. Unless you get to the Prem - which Bristol city still haven’t managed - it ends in tears.

I want us to have the ambition of getting in L1, but I’m under no illusion that we’d have a bottom 6 budget early doors even if we had an average wage of 3-4K per week. It’d be tough going.

In summary - Lincoln are playing with fire, and their fans don’t understand the word “investment “.

Quoted from Dogger Bank

I agree with your descriptions of some of the grounds and not what I would want if we ever went for a new home. That wasn't my point though, just examples of clubs who didn't pack their grounds out (some far from it) but they moved to try and take their club forward. I would assume the maintenance costs of running those grounds is significantly lower than trying to maintain an older ground and keep it up to standards to allow them to operate. Older grounds are romantic and part of the football heritage in this county, that doesn't mean we should keep them.

Blundell Park for me can't be improved drastically to make it viable long term. Surrounded three sides with terraced housing and a road/railway line the other. Any expansion (if that was possible) would cause even more traffic, parking and pedestrian issues in the surrounding area. There have been new grounds muted over a long period of time but none of come to fruition for various reasons. There have been good reasons why we should move and they still apply. As Andrew Pettit said at the forum any new ground would have to incorporate many  areas of use aside football to make it financially viable to run. It's not top of the shopping list for the club at the moment but long term we go nowhere staying at BP as a club, attracting players or new fans for that matter.

I don't know - the stewarding costs for MK must have been quite heavy there were more than them than fans - getting searched twice to get in seemed a bit ott for me and then not even being able to get a can at half time because they didn't have enough staff on at their 'bar' (i use the term loosely as anyone who has been there will know what I mean ) seemed a bit bizarre - a 30k stadium for a team that only gets 5k home fans on a good day is silly much like Darlington when they did the same.  

I do know where you are coming from and I bet there are a good few on here who would agree with you ; I actually do think we would get better crowds if we got it right not the massive % increase that some have but a good 2-3k more regulars and obviously you could offer a massive increase to away teams ; MK got 7k away fans 5 or 6 times last season in league 1 with there crap crowds it's more than home fans - I would not go that far but 1 or 2k more for the second half of this season would have probably been taken up a good few times .

We have done it to death though on here , the reality is there is no help is there and it would have to be self funded or leveraged against a load of debt which would cripple the club even if we were to get an extra 3k a week and better commercial revenue .

The only viable way is probably the 1 in a million chance we go through somehow like Luton  and fund a super stadium from that  .

I'm not a mind reader but the impression I get is the training ground would be key to 'moving through the gears' as Stockwood put it - less capital outlay with potential commercial opportunities there , better facilities = better players and to make money through selling young players/sell ons which we seem to have started the process of anyway (hopefully).

I've been reliably informed that the £3M is mainly due to the redevelopment of the Stacey West End at SB. I don't think Lincoln have to worry too much, they're one of the better ran clubs in L1 and L2 from what I gather. A bottom third of the division wage budget last according to the aforementioned source. There are some eye watering amounts of money being chucked around at that level, I don't think Lincoln are anywhere near the list of main offenders.

Quoted from 123614

But where are we going to get the £40 Mil+ from to build the ground?

£40m is a figure that was mentioned by JS but I'm not sure where he plucked that from. It cost £20m to build the New York Stadium in Rotherham. 10 years ago I admit but prices haven't doubled in the construction world I do know as I work in it.

Quoted from Dogger Bank

£40m is a figure that was mentioned by JS but I'm not sure where he plucked that from. It cost £20m to build the New York Stadium in Rotherham. 10 years ago I admit but prices haven't doubled in the construction world I do know as I work in it.

York City paid £47Mil for their new stadium.

Quoted from 123614

York City paid £47Mil for their new stadium.

True but the development hit issues which increased the costs quite a bit. Also land costs in York will be higher than here. I'm not saying a stadium built 10 years ago at £20m will be the same now. I just question £40m until a legitimate study has been done on a design and area where it would be located.

Yorks is a full leisure complex isn't it aswell?

Quoted from LocalLadGTFC

Yorks is a full leisure complex isn't it aswell?

It is and the football ground is only a part of it so it's not a fair comparison. It has a cinema, leisure centre and other buildings on the site so this added to the total cost.

Quoted from LocalLadGTFC

Yorks is a full leisure complex isn't it aswell?

Yeah mate