Top South London football journalist Richard Cawley looks at the £11m shortfall facing AFC Wimbledon for the first phase of their new stadium at Plough Lane. Despite the shortfall, fans are for now resistant to offers of external investment (three individuals who would each put in £2.5m) which would change the character of the club: Plough Lane build
Nevertheless, a leading blogger at the club said: 'It’s pretty clear some of the initial reaction from a fair amount of our fans – particularly younger ones – are all for the idea of selling off to some form of outside investment.' He also argued, 'There isn’t an £11m shortfall because they’ve actually got £5-6m of that secured if the other bit was in place.'
An interesting observation with wider applicability was: 'It’s part of the wider debate in League One about clubs improving their grounds. Andy Holt at Accrington talks about this – most owners are almost discouraged from doing it because they don’t get money back from that. Whereas if you throw all your money at going up the leagues then you’re going to kind of see a quicker return.' Stadiums are expensive and underutilised and even relatively new ones cost a lot to maintain (it was one of the factors which eventually led to the end of the Nene Park stadium of Rushden and Diamonds).
I am more sceptical than many analysts about the viability of fan owned clubs because even relatively prosperous fans have difficulty in raising the amount of money involved.
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