If you are a foreign investor and you want to buy a football club, how do you make your choice? When Tom Glick created a group of fellow US investors to take over Derby County, they looked at more than 20 clubs before making their decision.
If you are a foreign investor and you want to buy a football club, how do you make your choice? When Tom Glick created a group of fellow US investors to take over Derby County, they looked at more than 20 clubs before making their decision.
Glick explained to the Financial Times, ‘Derby had a great support base, and this wonderful facility. [Pride Park built on a brownfield site to replace the atmospheric but increasingly decrepit Baseball Ground]. But this is an economy that can underpin the bright future of this club – the household income, the export base, the strength of some of the local companies. We saw a football club that had a solid base and a bright future.’
What Glick did not mention is that Derby is a ‘stand alone’ club, i.e., it is in a city that is not part of a conurbation and which has a prosperous rural hinterland. Ipswich Town and Norwich City offer other examples.
Derby does have a globalised economy, although the downside of that means that it is potentially vulnerable to a sharp downturn. There is also uncertainty about the future of train maker Bombardier after it lost out on a big order to German firm Siemens, a decision which caused great resentment in the city and led to a campaign in which the football club was involved.
Even so, Derby exports more per capita than any city outside London and the south-east. The service sector is also growing after a few setbacks. But it is the presence of big advanced manufacturing groups such as Rolls-Royce civil aerospace with 12,000 employees which means that the city has much bigger average incomes than elsewhere.
For me it is reminiscent of the city of Coventry as it was when I went to live there in 1971. Motor car assembly and automotive parts were still booming then, although the first signs of trouble ahead were apparent. Nevertheless, the city was very prosperous and this was reflected in the success of the football team. As Coventry’s manufacturing base has decined, so has the football team, although some signs of a recent revival may give new hope.
As for Derby, local economic success still has to be translated to success on the pitch to come anywhere near the glory days of the early 1970s when a clutch of silverware, including two league titles, was won under Brian Clough.