Back in the day, Bournemouth was hardly a footballing mecca. Indeed, the club went through some troubled times. Now the club is 6th in the Premier League.
As for Bournemouth itself, it was an attractive seaside resort popular with Midlanders who often retired there. I remember going into a pub in Bournemouth with a couple of friends on New Year's Eve in 1965 and it was full of very elderly ladies drinking port and lemon. Fortunately, one of us was driving and we moved on. At one time it had a splendid fleet of yellow trolleybuses. Language schools developed there, but now it is a major high education centre.
Ever since Bournemouth were first promoted to the Premier League in 2015 they have punched above their weight. But the ambitions of a club who are the smallest in the Premier League both in terms of stadium capacity and revenue have been fuelled by a man who turns 80 on Sunday.
Bill Foley, an American billionaire, was in Bournemouth last
week, where he had lunch with the players and watched their 0-0 draw with
Crystal Palace.
Foley made his fortune in insurance and went on to
invest in often distressed business including wineries, hospitality venues and
an ice hockey team. He bought Bournemouth in December 2022, three years after
initially expressing an interest.
Bournemouth are the biggest asset of what has become a
multi-club football model. His Black Knights consortium own a 25 per cent stake
in Hibernian, purchased for £6 million in March, and have agreed to buy 70 per
cent of Moreirense, who are eighth in Portugal’s top flight. His portfolio also
includes an initial 40 per cent of Lorient, who are top of the second tier in
France, and Auckland, top of the A-League in Australia and New Zealand. Those
clubs could be a pathway for Bournemouth to sign players from around the world,
who would perhaps one day arrive on the south coast in England.
When Foley bought the ice hockey team the Vegas Golden
Knights in 2016, he wanted to make the Stanley Cup play-offs in three seasons
and win it in six. In the sixth season, in 2023, they achieved his goal when
they beat the Florida Panthers to lift the trophy. He has similarly lofty
ambitions for Bournemouth: he is aiming to qualify for Europe by 2027 and is
planning an initial 20,000-seat new stadium adjacent to the present ground,
which holds only 11,379. The outlay for his improvements may come to about
£120million, including the cost of a new training ground.
Last summer the club broke their transfer record to sign
Evanilson, a Brazil striker, from Porto for an initial £31.7million rising to
£40.2million, paid for by the £55million sale of Dominic Solanke to Tottenham.
Better players, however, mean higher wages. The wage bill
rose from £61million to £100million a year in the 2022-2023 season — their
first campaign back in the Premier League after two in the Championship. Yet
that total was still the second lowest in the league, and only £1million more
than the wage bill of Brentford, the lowest spenders. The present top earners,
Evanilson and Kluivert, are paid about £80,000 a week.
A new era indeed.
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