Simon Jordan: Owning Crystal Palace was like being a drug addict – after the initial rush it was a headache and emptied my bank
ONCE upon a time I owned a football club. It was one I grew up supporting, one my father had played for and one, as its owner, I had huge enthusiasm and great ambitions for.
After ten years of ownership, the best part of £50million of my money gone and the poor house beckoning, I came to a conclusion.
It was that owning a club, I imagined, was a bit like being a drug addict.
You indulge yourself in something you enjoy knowing it’s bad for you and, after a few initial rushes of pleasure, it gives you a headache and sucks all the money out of your bank account.
Club ownership was a very difficult proposition when I arrived as a 31-year-old in 2000.
The idea that football was a business was an affront to fans.
The best chairmen were the ones you’d never heard of and, according to Len Shackleton’s book, “The Average Director’s Knowledge of Football?” One blank page. That’s all changed.
The motivations for owning a club are varied.
Ego always plays a part. Some buy them just because they can, some for the kudos and some to own an iconic British institution.
ABRAMOVICH CHANGED IT ALL
Others from foreign shores do it for the influence and others because it buys legitimacy and credibility. I heard it said that a certain West London club owner bought it as the world’s biggest life insurance policy.
Sadly, now we appear to also have those who buy a club simply because they believe it’s something they can rip cash from.
What surely needs to be at the centre of owning a community proposition like a football club is a sense of responsibility.
Football has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Two main changes have been in 1991 the launch of Sky and the repackaging of football as a media proposition and, in 2003, the arrival of Roman Abramovich.
Sure, Jack Walker had lit the blue touch paper by buying the Premier League title with Blackburn in 1995.
But nothing prepared football or raised the expectations of fans regarding entitlement for their club more than Abramovich’s billions.
The days of the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker owning clubs because it made them a big man in their town have most likely gone.
But not every club should want or scream for a Sheikh Mansour and the puddle of Middle Eastern money and fans should be careful what they wish for.
Look at the carcasses of clubs coming back from ownership of a sort that lost its way — Portsmouth, Leeds, Aston Villa, Sunderland and Coventry, to name a few.
They have been left almost on the brink and in some case are taking decades to rebuild.
I lost my club through a series of circumstances and bad luck.
The whole banking system collapsing and my foolish bravery didn’t help.
It cost me a fortune but I fell on my sword and allowed the club to come back, writing off fortunes predominantly owed to me as, rightly or wrongly, I believed that was the greater responsibility I had and so I gave it to others for virtually nothing.
Despite all the billions now involved, football still needs heart and soul and owners who believe, care and honour their responsibility of being a custodian.
That’s why, in my view, the fans of Bolton and Bury deserve far better than the Ken Andersons and Steve Dales of this world.
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But fans screaming for the next owner to bankroll their club should remember that they too have a part to play in the responsibility towards the sustainability of their club.
They need to look past everything being simply about money. A club with heart and soul is worth so much more.
- The Final Word with Simon Jordan is on every Sunday from 5-8pm.