Stefan Rupp

He could have said shit.

 

Sorry it's so long...

Just a bit of stuff on the Wagmi vs Rupp version of events regarding the timeline of the bid etc. There does seem to be a widespread assumption that Rupp's version is false with a "lack of transparency" around the whole situation being the general consensus for the lack of trust in his account and it's impossible to verify one way or another. However, a few people do seem to have made the assumption that if Rupp's account is false then the Wagmi one must be true, which is possible but not necessarily correct. The difference between Rupp and Wagmi is that Wagmi are very transparent, have made multiple announcements on the subject and are active Twitter users which means that it is possible to verify (or not) many of their statements.

If anyone wants to dig around, I'd suggest @hunterorrell, @SportsCheetah (Preston Johnson), @Gfunkera86 (Gary) and @Pixelvault_ as a starting point.

We know that the main man is PJ, with Eben Smith being a co-founder and "Gary" being the tech guy and these are the 3 key players in the set up, this comes from the WaPo article and comments PJ made in the HO townhall regarding the Wagmi trip to the UK. There are obviously plenty of others in the background bringing financial muscle, branding expertise etc but we've seen and heard from the core 3.

PJ said on the HO townhall that the genesis for the idea was 2 months ago, so the concept of Wagmi did not exist prior to mid October. Both PJ and Gary mentioned meetings at NFT.NYC as a driver for the project with Gary stating on the PV townhall that the group formed organically and met at NFT.NYC which could mean that's when he formally joined the group or maybe it was just the first time they all met in person but he had been on The Kevin Rose podcast PROOF 30th Oct to outline his plans for his company (Pixel Vault) and there was no hint of any potential diversification outside of their existing community. NFT.NYC ran from 1st Nov-4th Nov and there are multiple location stamped tweents to confirm that Gary and PJ were there throughout this time.

On the HO townhall PJ mentioned that himself, ES and Gary and been to England and driven all around the country having in depth discussions with clubs and had even been to youth development coaching sessions. From their Twitter feeds we can see that they caught the red-eye from NY after NFT.NYC and arrived in London on the afternoon of Friday 5th November. At some point on Friday they met a crypto (non-football) contact who was aware of them having an important meeting (singular) on Saturday 6th November. They flew back to NY from London early afternoon Sunday 7th November. We can see that Gary was wearing a Stevenage FC shirt on his departure from London so it is safe to assume that they had a serious discussion with Stevenage FC which could well have involved a 1hr drive to see their FA Cup match at MK Dons. Additionally, they have been linked with Sutton Utd and they were at home in the FA cup on the same day and have training fields next to their stadium so potentially they could have made a quick trip there prior to the meeting with Stevenage. What is clear from their Twitter is that they were expecting to hear a decision about the outcome of the meeting on 6th Nov a few days after 7th Nov, there was no space in their schedule to fit in a trip to Bradford although PJ did make 2 zoom calls whilst in london (which could have included City) but they were wearing Stevenage merch when they left the UK which does not suggest that City were in the front running on 7th Nov. They have not been back to the UK since so we know that PJ's claim to have driven around the country visiting multiple clubs to hold in depth discussions is spurious at best and certainly did not include City.

The Wagmi statement says that they have been engaged in productive negotiations since early November. Given that Stevenage were almost certainly the club in the box seat on 7th Nov and were not exected to make a decision for a few days, it's already edging towards mid November before City could be centre of attention (but perhaps that's being picky about a figure of speeach). PJ said on the HO townhall that they had looked at 9 clubs across 3 countries, is the 3 week gap from first thinking about buying a football club until flying to UK enough time to thoroughly vet 9 clubs and line up financial backing from a consortium of 50, especially when one of theose 3 weeks was taken up with a key convention for the NFT industry? If City had been identified as a potential target at this time, why were they not on the itinerary for the UK trip? Is it more likely that there was knock back from Stevenage sometime after 7th Nov and then City and others were subsequently investigated and possibly contacted? That's all circumstancial but there a few more things which question the validity of the "early November" statement in comparison to Rupp's version. Firstly, the Wayback Machine has no record of the Wagmi website prior to 16th Dec and secondly during the PV townhall 16th Dec Gary stated they were "very early in the process" and then subsequently called it "Day 1" and then there was the apparent surprise in the HO townhall in relation to the ownership of VP despite weeks of due diligence.

The final part of the Wagmi statement that we can scrutinise is the part about Rupp agreeing a deal on Thursday prior to the publication of the news article. The WaPo article was published 8am EST on Thursday 16th Dec (1pm GMT) and the EFL had been contacted by the journo to comment, this would mean that the interview for the article took place at least one day earlier than the publication date. Which means that on Wednesday 15th Dec Wagmi were saying they were in the advanced stages of the purchase despite not having any agreement whatsoever from Rupp. In addition, PJ stated on the HO townhall that he was asleep when the story broke and when he got up (an hour later i.e. 9am EST, 2pm GMT) the first thing he did was to deal with a TV company enquiry off the back of the story regarding the production of a documentary so whichever way you look at it, the assertion about the agreement coming on Thursday morning and then being withdrawn following the story being broken is obviously false because not only did the story come before the deal supposedly happened but the guy that supposedly made the deal was asleep when the deal was supposedly being made.

I summary, is Rupp telling the truth - dunno, are Wagmi telling the truth - definitely not.

 

Boo! Spoilsport, how very dare you suggest the yanks are in the alltogether now, alltogether now, they’re as naked as the day that they were born? It’s panto season and Herr Rupp absolutely must be be the bad guy.

By the way, excellent and very thought provoking post @Fuzzy

 

A nice bit of work indeed, @Fuzzy. Thank you.

RCB

 

Great research @Fuzzy , so it does seem like there connection with City doesn't go back to November where their interest in Stevenage seemed apparent - and there was an article about a month ago that said the Stevenage owner had been contacted about a potential sale to them. As for the formation of the group they did admit it'd only occurred after the NFT convention but I can see why people would be worried about their due diligence regarding City considering that was only a month ago, but I suppose its possible we're already on a lot of peoples radar when it comes to lower league clubs they could fund up the leagues.

Financially, it definitely seems they weren't a bunch of kids who managed to scrape a few million together and were looking to bleed the club out with this NFT venture.

@SportsCheetah ('Director'), @Gfunkera86 , Co-creators of Punks COMIC and PixelVault:

• Punks COMIC Last 30 Days - $23,008,196
• Metahero Universe Last 7 Days - $580k
• PixelVault also sign with WME, holding agency worth around $10B.

The first two figures above are trading volumes so they should include re-sales and aren't net profit

As you know they also struck an NFT deal with Adidas very recently, they made at least $4,949,368 as I saw in a tweet they'd sent that much to the $PUNKS community treasury (token holders can earn money through 'staking'). Adidas also collaborated with @gmoneyNFT who was involved with the group and spoke (very briefly) on the twitter space talk. These were just the frontmen of the group obviously, but the group also included:
Gary Vaynerchuk - $200m net worth

My point is really that if an enormous corporation like Adidas could trust them as partners for their first step into the NFT marketplace which went off great, then I think they're owed a bit of trust instead of being referred to as "chancers" by some. Their operations are far more transparent in comparison to Rupp, who is pretty much a mystery man, can't find anything about him other than he sold a stake in his helicopter seat business, and teamed up with Edin, bringing the club back 10 years. I think Rupp has far more to gain from lying as he wants to portray himself as a 'custodian' of the club, and Rahic the pantomime villain who he valiantly rid us of, as that's all he has to do to appease the local media and Bantam 'faithful'

TLDR: I think this WAGMI groups financial bravado is probably true, their business dealings are far more transparent, and their partnership with Adidas shows they're not some unprofessional outfit (although their website suggests such). I think Rupp for what he's done to the club has negative credit when it comes to trust.

Sorry for the long post, but I think if this NFT group spoke as few words as Rupp does and were equally opaque, then this deal would've already gone ahead

 

The way I feel, the season can finish tomorrow. It's over. it's not my club anymore. Rupp/Sparks & Co can sign as many £600 a week rejects as they want. They can get on with it.

 

Doesn’t matter if Rupp is telling the truth or not. Bradford City fans and the club need to get rid of him as an owner of this club!!! Bloody useless he is and the club had gone totally backwards under his god dam lazy ownership!!

Rupp OUT!

 

Don't give up mate.

One day we'll be fundin a promotion push by buying a NFT of Finn Cousin-Dawson taking a throw in. If they haven't all been snapped up by our millions of new fans in the States or Far East that is.

 

And that could have happened.

 

It will happen.

We're All Gonna Make It.

 

It wouldn't have happened. They could have incorporated the club into their existing products which are obviously very lucrative, and they clearly know how to market their ideas

 

@ModernBantam without wanting to veer too far away from Rupp on this thread, I don't think there's any doubt that they had the means to buy the club - apparently they've got some very serious financial muscle behind them. It's not even about all the crypto/NFT stuff because that created a massive "dead cat" type diversion of people arguing the pros/cons and ignorance/knowledge of NFT's etc rather than looking at what the business plan was. Look at FGR for example, Dale Vince's latest business scheme is about making diamonds out of the sky which makes NFT look safe, boring and easily understandable but no one is up in arms about the weird stuff because he's got a cogent plan for FGR.

I agree with you on the visibility of the deal being a huge issue, if it hadn't blown up on Thursday, I think they would have had much more chance of getting a deal done.

Re the adidas stuff - I can see the advantages to a tie in with Pixel Vault (which is very different to a buy out) and there are a lot of clubs already exploiting NFT. NFT in English football is still relatively new but anyone who keeps an eye on football finance news will have been familiar with the concept for at least a year. There has been a lot of bad press but most of that is focussed around the value to fans/investors (but let's leave that argument to one side for now) rather than business side of things from a club perspective. I think that will start to change over the next 12 months as club's 2022 accounts are published and we'll start to see what sort of impact NFT is having to balance sheets in the industry.

 

Excellent post - I think a lot of peoples reservations have been purely because they don’t understand the business that these guys are coming from.
Id much rather have someone invest in us in the crypto currency business rather than what the owners of Man City and Newcastle represent.

 

Im still yet to hear a convincing argument why selling NFTs would work for a League Two football club - one that has very little appeal outside of Bradford, let alone across the globe.

for a top Pl side, yeah, I can see why there might be a market.

why do they think it would work at a Bradford or Stevenage?

 

A bit off subject and not City related but talking of crappy owners... Look at what Oldham are resorting to!

 

Be interesting to see if that ban is enforceable anywhere other than Boundary Park. As an aside, what an arsey letter. Diddums springs to mind. Mr. Brown should be embarrassed.

 

Another club being run into the ground by an owner not fit for purpose. We have been seeing far too much of that over the past while.

As one of the comments has it, being 91st out of 92 league clubs is some strange idea of progression indeed! While there are clubs whose relegation to non-league wouldn't bother me, Oldham is not one of them.

RCB

 

I see on another site that Mr Sparks has deleted his Twitter account ? He must be getting cheesed off with everything

 

Maybe a final deal is at hand?