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New financial challenges for Wimbledon after investors walk away

Sloane Street Capital (SSC) has officially withdrawn from its proposed £87 million investment in AFC Wimbledon, causing the club to cancel its extraordinary general meeting (EGM) and face heightened financial pressures.   The Dons Trust are holding their annual meeting on Monday.

AFC Wimbledon are one of only two majority fan-owned clubs in the EFL – along with Exeter City – but that makes running a loss-making operation, as 94% of teams in England’s top five tiers are doing according to the State of the Game report, even more challenging. “In other clubs, the owner just puts their hand in their pocket, produces cash,” said Hannah Kitcher, who has been a member of the Dons Trust Board (DTB), which runs AFC Wimbledon, for seven years. “It’s harder when the owners are fans – you can only go to them so many times.”

Wimbledon made a £2.6m loss in the 2024-25 season – a figure expected to increase by £500,000 when they publish their accounts next month – which, as Kitcher pointed out, is not as loss-making as a number of other clubs in League One. 

The makeup of the club has since changed. Last April, supporters voted in favour of reducing their voting rights from 75% to 50.01% – the same 50+1 model that gives fans the final say on decisions at German clubs – and Wimbledon sought a cash injection. An £87m investment proposal from Sloane Street Capital (SSC), a venture including the sole funder, Omar Mir, and the former Chelsea and England defender Ryan Bertrand, was already being voted on by fans when Mir suddenly walked away last Sunday, citing a change in his investment priorities.

Mir passed Wimbledon’s due diligence tests, but the tech businessman was not a unifying figure. A Josimar report has detailed his “various connections to some of the most influential and controversial figures in football, technology and global security”. The 44-year-old did not attend either of the information evenings at Plough Lane after the proposal was first made in October, instead sending a two-minute video message, which meant fans could not directly ask him about his intention to purchase 90% of the economic rights of a fan-owned football club.

But the SSC deal is not completely dead. Bertrand and his remaining SSC partners Stuart Fiertz, Oliver Ward and Hugh Rosen – who would have owned 1.25% each of Wimbledon’s economic rights in the original proposal – have renamed themselves Sloane Street Football and are talking to other potential investors.

In the meantime, the board will seek approval from fans about taking out a loan of up to £3m to “manage the club’s cash position”, but they believe they are currently able to manage it through to the end of this season and into the next.   They have received a number of offers of unsecured loans which should help them over the short term.

 

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