Is it just me that subscribes to the FT website then?
How to play a game of two halves
By David Owen
Published: February 19 2008 02:00 | Last updated: February 19 2008 02:00
Chris Dunphy tries to keep Mondays free. "If there is a crisis that is going to arise at a football club, it tends to be on a Monday," explains the chairman of Rochdale, the League Two football club.
Outside football, he travels about 40,000 miles a year round the UK running Christopher Dunphy Ecclesiastical, a company specialising in heating systems for churches. His dual role has scheduling implications for his clients. "I . . . tie it in with the football diary," he says. "If we are away at Hereford, that is the week all the churches in Hereford get a look-at."
Volatile, emotional and resistant to quick management fixes, football is a peculiar old business. This is not deterring more and more people from wanting a piece of the action, with foreign interest - and investment - in UK football clubs surging in recent times.
Businesspeople who own or direct a football club such as Mr Dunphy often have to juggle part-time passion with their mainstream commercial interests. Most are motivated by the chance to use their resources and skills to support the team. But the role can offer subtle benefits for business, too.
Stephen Lansdown is in his sixth season as chairman of Bristol City, a club pushing for promotion to the English Premier League. He is also chairman and co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, a financial adviser and broker that employs about 650, mainly in Bristol.
In combining the two roles, Mr Lansdown's basic premise is that regular office hours in the week are devoted to Hargreaves Lansdown - "my main job" - with time outside of that dedicated to the football club, of which he is the majority shareholder. While football conversations may need to be held during the normal working day, and sometimes travel to away matches, football-related paperwork is generally consigned to evenings and weekends.
In common with other football chairmen interviewed, judicious delegation is key to Mr Lansdown's ability to wear his two hats effectively. "I have a chief executive and a finance director at the football club," he says. "I delegate the day-to-day stuff to them. They come to me for final sign-off . . . If you employ people, you have got to put your trust in them and that is what I try and do."
Unlike Mr Dunphy, he does not tailor his UK travel to the football fixture programme - "except a day in London is quite useful". Moreover, there is "no way" he would get Hargreaves Lansdown to sponsor the club. "Being chairman of Bristol City doesn't bring new clients to Hargeaves Lansdown," he says. "But it is a conversation piece wherever you go."
Ken Hodcroft, chairman of Hartlepool United and director of Increased Oil Recovery Ltd, the Aberdeen-based oil company that controls the club, appreciates the value of football for fostering relationships in the international energy business. "You can fly into Tunisia or Russia and maybe everyone in the meeting is a bit frosty," he says. "What I tend to do is happen to mention that we own a football club. It's amazing. People's faces change. It breaks the ice."
The club is seen as a good vehicle for corporate entertainment, with Mr Hodcroft noting that Hartlepool chief executive Russ Green had had "quite a few oil people" as guests at a recent League One match at Southend. "We had a guy there from Guinea-Bissau," the African country where one of its network companies had offshore acreage, he says.
IOR bought the club 10 years ago in the aftermath of the controversy over the proposed disposal of the Brent Spar oil platform in the North Sea. At the time, IOR was alive to the possible public relations benefits of an association with a club that was a source of pride to its local community in a period when the oil industry's image had been dented.
Mr Hodcroft says that football club business tends to take up "a couple of hours a day, plus additional time at evenings and weekends".
"We have put in place a structure at the club along the lines of how we would run an oil company. We have the same procedures for purchasing decisions, including player acquisitions. The safety documents for the football ground are based on oil company-type safety standards. Our accountant in Aberdeen does the audits and keeps an eye on the economics."
Problems, though, are often harder to fix in football than the energy business. "In the oil business, you can make changes," Mr Hodcroft says. "In the football business, all we can control is the finances. We can't control results or the team on the pitch and we have to answer to the Football League and the Football Association. It can all be quite frustrating at times."
He says that new technology has helped to ensure that his overseas travel for oil-related business does not impair the smooth running of the club. "E-mails and the internet have been a big change since 1997 [when we bought the club]," he says. "Nowadays you can run a business from pretty much anywhere."
Darragh MacAnthony, Peterborough United's chairman, makes full use of remote technologies. As chairman of MRI Overseas Property, a company that helps people buy and sell property in 18 countries, and with homes of his own in Marbella, London, Florida and Switzerland, he is used to conducting business over the telephone.
In a blog on his website (
http://www.darraghmacanthony.com), Mr MacAnthony explains how he identified the club's current manager, Darren Ferguson, last year after "a long time on the phone" with him. Describing Mr Ferguson - son of Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson - as "a young man in a hurry, a bit like myself", Mr MacAnthony asserts that, while "people say you cannot judge somebody over the phone . . . [I] have built a business up using the phone and am usually a good judge of character".
When he speaks to the FT, the Peterborough chairman says he was "even more impressed [with Ferguson] when I met him four weeks later". With the club pushing for promotion from League Two, his decision looks to have been vindicated.
The blog conveys how minutely - and passionately - he follows the club's affairs, even from abroad. "Everywhere my money is spent, I have to be involved at a micro level," he says. When in the US, he has Peterborough's matches digitally broadcast to him.
Like the other chairmen, Dublin-born Mr MacAnthony insists he does not allow the emotional highs and lows of football to spill over into his mainstream business, even though "I'm not a very good loser", he says.
Rochdale's Mr Dunphy, who saw his first match at the club in 1960, does admit he would find being chairman "a lot easier" if his heart wasn't in it. "If things are difficult, you will sink some of your own money in just to get over a hump," he says.
And while nobody thought a poor run at the football club had a negative impact on their other businesses, Mr Dunphy jokingly suggests it might encourage him to steer clear of his local supermarket. "When things are not going so well, you go to Tesco in Bury or Oldham or something," he says.
Club banked priceless publicity from monkey business
Football club ownership can pay off in unexpected ways.
For Ken Hodcroft, chairman of Hartlepool United, a £500 loan was the best investment the club ever made. He arranged for it to lend the money to Stuart Drummond, the man inside H'Angus the monkey, the club's mascot, enabling him to register to run in the 2002 election to become mayor of the port.
When Mr Drummond was subsequently elected - and re-elected in 2005 - the story received widespread media coverage. The election got us "more worldwide publicity for the oil company, the football club and the shirt sponsor than anything else we could have invested in", Mr Hodcroft says.
At the time, the sponsor of the Hartlepool shirts sported by H'Angus was DNO, a Norwegian oil company. Mr Hodcroft is also director of Increased Oil Recovery, the privately owned oil services company that owns about 90 per cent of the club.
H'Angus's name derives from a local legend according to which a monkey was washed ashore from a wrecked French ship during the Napoleonic wars, only to be hanged as a suspected spy.
Login
Register
FAQ
