It will make my season when Peace finally sells up, all he has even wanted was to cash in his shares and move on. I will happily risk losing him, as I am positive that we could find a real Albion man to look after the club.
Peace an Albion supporter, I don't think so.
My worry though, even though he would never admit it, is that he will sell out to whoever offers the most cash.
Unfortunately, he will never find anyone to offer the kings ransom that he wants.
Sir Jack Haywood he isn't.....
Much as I can appreciate your desire for a proper baggie to take over at Albion, I would suggest that probability is against it. As I have mentioned previously, it is very very very hard to sell big sporting assets, even to people who can unquestionably afford them. When you then tell the broker that they have to narrow down their universe to just Albion fans it becomes so much harder still. It would be analogous to asking an estate agent to sell your £10m house for you but then saying that it can only be sold to a buyer with one leg and purple hair.
A few stats might help. I would stress that each of these are probably miles out but the general direction is helpful:
We are looking for someone who:
1. Has the money to buy Albion
2. Has the desire to use that money to buy Albion
3. Is an Albion fan
1. How many people have the money to buy Albion? We don't know how much JP wants for the club but most people on here suggest £100m. Let's take that as the correct figure. I would imagine that labaggies doesn't want the new owner to be a highly leveraged investor who will run the business for cash and take whatever they can out of the club. I would imagine they want someone who would be willing to not just spend what the club generates in cash each year (which is roughly what JP has done give or take a £m or two each year). Let's say that we want the new investor to also spend £50m of their own money on improving the team. Ok, we want someone who will spend a total of £150m. If that is the case we don't just need someone with £150m because it is unlikely that anyone will put their entire net worth into a club. Everyone will have their own view of what proportion of their wealth they would commit or risk to the Albion. Let's assume that no-one will invest more than 1/3rd of their wealth. We are therefore looking for someone with a net worth of £450m. That puts a person at circa 240th richest in the UK according to the Sunday Times Rich List. The chance of finding a person richer than that in Britain out of 65m people is 0.0004%.
2. Will that person invest their money? I know a number of multi-millionaires and several billionaires. I know people who have had the chance to buy Blackburn, Grimsby and other teams that I can't mention. They could have bought them without making a noticeable change to their bank balance. Only last week I offered my business partner (who is worth circa £220m) a chance to buy half of a club his father supported for £5m and he laughed at me! Just because we like something and afford it doesn't mean we will buy it. Let's assume that 1/10 people who can afford to buy Albion will actually want to buy it (and I think that is generous).
3. Will that person be an Albion fan? It's hard to measure how many fans we have. We have a capacity of 26+k and an average attendance of a bit less. If we had a massive cup match at Wembley we would easily take 50k. Let's be generous and say there are 100k Albion fans which would be every adult male in Sandwell. Again I would say this is generous given the number of those who don't like football, follow W*lves etc. 100k people is roughly 0.15% of the people in the UK.
If we multiply 0.0004% x 10% x 0.15% you find the probability that there is someone in the UK who is an Albion fan ready willing and able to throw £150m at Albion. The answer is 0.000000005%. Put another way, that's odds of 173,333,000,000/1. Put another way those odds are roughly the same as having an accumulator on the new Royal baby being named Wayne (1000/1), alien life being proved (1000/1), UKIP winning the next election (250/1) and Spurs winning the Premier League this year (500/1). Perhaps you could have that bet with £1 and if it comes off, you can buy Albion and still have nearly £100m left to improve the team!
http://www.oddschecker.com/novelty/alien-existence/when-will-alien-life-be-provenhttp://www.oddschecker.com/novelty/royal-baby-ii/name-of-babyhttp://www.oddschecker.com/football/english/premier-league/winnerOf course there are odd examples that arrive and make a nonsense of the odds. Sir Jack Hayward, Steve Lansdown et al are genuine fans who put a lot of their own money into their own clubs. There MAY be a Albion fan out there with £500m and a willingness to invest. I would question why he hasn't already done so when prices were much lower. Maybe he made his money recently and couldn't have invested before the Premier League, Thompson etc. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Very unlikely in my view.
For me, if JP sells then we are facing either a single high net worth individual with no affiliation to our club or an investor. I would love to imagine a consortium being built from amongst fans but they numbers have become so big that I just can't see how it would be managed. We would need at least 100 seriously wealthy people (remembering that someone with a mere £1m of net wealth couldn't put £1m in as a lot would be tied up in their house, business, pension etc and wouldn't be liquid). I seriously doubt that there are enough HNWs in and around Albion to make this happen and if it did happen it would be pretty hard to manage.
On a positive note, great point today!
COYB!