Most liked posts in thread: Stefan Rupp

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.

 

Under Stefan’s ownership City have gone from challenging for promotion to the championship to scratting around in league two having to ‘stretch the budget’ to sign Theo Robinson. Nothing against Theo but in my opinion Stefan needs to fund the club back to where he found it and then sell up. Year on year regression under his ownership after the play off defeat against Milwall.

 

In what way is he dreadful ? Is the club heavily in debt ? Are we on the permanent verge of administration ? is he taking money out of the club ? Is the stadium falling to bits ? Have we employed a no mark manager ? Is the budget the lowest in the league ? Were we one of the clubs that potentially could have closed due to Covid ? Are we running up unsustainable debt every month ? Does he come out in the press every month and threaten taking the seats away and moving to the second biggest rubbish tip in West Yorkshire ? Has he thrown millions in to fund promotion and is now throwing his teddies out of the pram to get it back like Hoyle ? Has he lent the club money at 9% and taken that back as soon as we have a good cup run ? Has money from selling young players to PL league teams disappeared to cover a "shortfall" ?

Answer to all is no, your idea of a dreadful owner is one who doesn't employ Pep and spend millions on players, one who doesn't deliver instant gratification. This is fourth division football. Rahic was dreadful, Rhodes was inept, Lawn a chancer who got lucky with a good manager. Compare those to Stafford Higginbotham who built the club up organically from being liquidated and over a period achieved success we could only dream of.

Good owners are ones that employ a CEO that can run the club without their daily involvement or interference and do so without the club getting into debt. Owners being the involved on a day to day basis can cause more trouble that it's worth because they know every decision they make is playing with their own money. Hence the reason Lawn buggered off almost as soon as he could find a buyer and get his 9% loan back.

What Rupp has done wrong is allow Rahic to be CEO and allow him to get on with it, a mistake I'm sure he regrets and won't repeat with Sparks, a mistake he is currently rectifying over a period of time that allows us to grow without going into debt. Living in Germany and not speaking in the press does not make him a bad owner. Setting a playing budget in line with the clubs income doesn't either.

This club has been either in administration or liquidated three times and before that was on the verge of liquidation in 1965 before Stafford arrived the first time. No other club in British football has survived that and still remain.

 

I don’t expect a new owner to piss money away. In recruiting Adams, Stefan has got a good manager and he’s been backed with a forward line of Cook, Angol, Lavery and Robinson. I don’t think that’s a whole lot better than Novak, Guthrie, Donaldson and Samuels a year ago. Who signed them is anyone’s guess but I assume Turnbull’s departure is a hint.

So I expect a new owner to take an interest in the success of the club more than from a financial aspect and to understand that s/he is merely a custodian of the club for future generations. Their aim should be to leave the club in a better place than they found it and preferably without losing too much money. I expect investment in infrastructure as Andy Holt is doing at Accrington. I’d like an owner who isn’t here to waste money like Mel Morris at Derby, but also one who provides a budget that doesn’t limit us to cast offs from other clubs. Rupp arrived with a goal of developing players and selling for a profit. What happened to that? Charlie Wyke left three years ago. We’ve relied on cast offs and non league standard players since.

I like a lot of what Sparks is doing and I think Adams is the right manager. I’d like an owner who has a clear and realistic aim for the club. A clear and realistic aim that isn’t just raising season ticket prices, selling more shirts, sponsorship and 1903 club membership and not really strengthening the playing squad whilst saying failure to get promoted is failure.

I don’t think that’s a lot to ask for.

 

Agree with the general gist of this. Yesterday wasn't the fault of a budget as such, if a manager can't get a shot on target out of what was pretty much his full available squad then we have worse problems than first thought. But then the wise amongst us knew this month's ago. An undeserved win over Barrow might excite a few on here but christ on a bike you have to see the bigger picture.

 

Completely agree but on the flip side we have fans (and associate directors like Roger Owen) literally on their knees thanking him for taking the McBurnie money from the club after the bloke he employed to run it overspent.

It happened on Rupps watch, he was negligent at best and should now either suck it up and invest in the manager or sell the club at a huge loss and leave it to someone else.

 

If anyone seriously thinks that January is going to be a magical, game-changing super month then you’re in for a serious reality check and heavy disappointment.

We have an owner who can’t be arsed to travel to Bradford in years and is more interested in having a public war of who’s lying with a bunch of IT kids over the pond.

We have a CEO who literally runs away, hides and goes as far as deleting his engagement platform with fans when the going gets tough.

We have yes-men board members who back inept hierarchy and attempt to coerce fans into thinking they’re wrong and everything is ok.

We have a manager who plays shite football and has a reputation throughout the EFL of being a miserable sod which appeals to only dross footballers who are only just trying to retain their status as a professional.

Unless Dynamo comes in with a wand the only direction we’re heading is for the trap door to non-league within 2 seasons.

 

Well if I was Adams I would be seething with Rupp. Imagine dropping a division to be given a budget where you get Port Vales cast off striker. Even Peterborough’s chairman stated that with the crowds we get we should have a fantastic budget, forget the cheaper ticket prices; think about the shirt sales, food/drinks sales, the 1903 club…where is all this money going where we can’t back a manager to get a prized striker!? The amount of chances we are creating currently…if we had invested properly we would be sitting very pretty at the top. That striker you may have invested in now worth double the amount or more, why are we so tunnel visioned!

 

For balance Richmond gave us the best years we've ever had. Did exactly what he saod he would do until he went batshit crazy. Wouldnt change those years for anything.

 

If Ryan’s ill, I hope its nothing serious, first and foremost. It’s not an easy role he’s in, he’s new to it and it will bring plenty of stress that he’ll need to learn how to manage.

Personally I don’t care whether he’s active on Social Media. I just hope he’s able to lead this club forward, starting in January with a strong round of recruitment to rescue this season.

 

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!

 

“Sadly, the actions of WAGMI United LLC have detrimentally brought both my integrity and the club’s reputation into question. It is for this reason I have instructed my lawyers to explore all possible legal redress forthwith.”

Ironic. Rupp's done more to damage the reputation of this club than WAGMI ever could.

 

Quite right. The biggest value in owning the ground would be in the security and leverage it would provide against borrowing. The rental cost isn’t pennies, but its not huge either. The longer term return on investment would be a challenge, because the purchase price would need to be above market rate in order to tempt Gibb into selling. In many respects, the most attractive solution would be a new, state of the art stadium, shared with the Bulls as a shared venture with the council and which would integrate retail/leisure opportunities for the public. But that takes a degree of vision, funding and ambition which this City as a whole fundamentally lacks.

In terms of Rupps longer term aspirations, the obvious conclusion to draw is that he won’t be here long term. Similarly, the obvious assessment of his tenure so far is one of failure, because of how the club has regressed. And I’m not saying either of those assessments is wrong, but there’s maybe a point to consider when looking at his current level of investment appetite. Across the game, more and more clubs and their fans judge owner value on the basis of whether that owner pumps money in to drive growth. And for all sorts of reasons we’ve expected/wanted Rupp to fuel the sort of growth that other much smaller clubs have seen over recent years. However, lets look at his regime in full context:

Why did he buy the club? He doesn’t look to be massively into football, so any sense of benevolent donation to drive this club up the leagues was clearly never part of his thinking. He also clearly didn’t appreciate exactly what he was getting into and was misled by Rahic. I’d imagine that his motivation was in part, the kudos of owning a club and possibly becoming a figure of adoration. But he’s essentially a businessman - he’ll have been sold a vision by Rupp of how this club could become a conveyor built for talent to be sold at profit and how the commercial side was seriously underexposed. I actually think both points remain true, but his experience to date is one of putting a huge amount of cash in and seeing the club got nowhere but backwards - the idea of relegation won’t have even been discussed, is my guess. And that’s not to say that he’s lost lots of money on running costs, because the McBurnie money covered much of that risk, but nevertheless, he’s likely been shocked by the volatility and risk of financial loss. And that’s before you even start to think about COVID impacts. I think I’m right in saying that this season will be the first whereby our operating and running costs are at a sustainable level, at a level where he can see responsible running of his business. Maybe that’s his primary challenge to Sparks before he might consider putting money in that he has more confidence will provide a return? Purely in business terms, that actually makes a lot of sense - very few business owners will inject their own capital to ‘grow’ a business that’s operating at a loss, that’s going backwards and that has huge amounts of inherent risk. The first job is to stop that bleeding, stabilise things and establish a management team that demonstrate prudence and capability.

Maybe its wishful thinking on my part - and we DO need to get out of this division ASAP - but even if we don’t go up this season, budgets don’t need to be slashed, we’ll most likely have the same manager, CEO, back room staff, 75% of the squad will remain and next summer would be a much more likely platform for him to consider putting money into transfer fees, for example.

He’s obviously accountable for the last 4 years, so its not a case of letting him off the hook - but he hasn’t been running the club. If you were him, would you put millions into a club that’s been run like a basket case, or would you want to see some evidence that we’ve got our shit together and are now actually ready to spend money wisely, within a strategic plan that’s actually credible and in the hands of capable people…..?

 

Parky had gone by then, end of McCall’s first season in his second spell, the start of Edin pissing about. He was at City from June ‘16 to Dec ‘18, been gone three years, time we moved on. Blaming him is a convenient excuse these days. At the end of the 2016/17 season, Tranmere, Sutton, Lincoln, Forest Green and Barrow were in the National League, Harrogate finished 11th in the NL North, five places above Park Avenue. Hartlepool were relegated from the league and have been promoted back again. Three of those seven clubs are above us in the league, two in a division above.

To blame Edin three years after he left is to absolve of blame all of those who have been there since.

 

Too many people inside and outside the club are just happy to have a club to support. That’s one problem.

We should apparently be grateful to Stefan for saving the club. In my mind that’s like thanking the bloke who’s just mugged you for calling the ambulance.

 

In exchange for Billy Sharp ?

 

So now they are having a pissing contest over who is the biggest liar.

 

A Tale of Two Cities
2015/16
Bradford L1 Play Off Semi Final
Lincoln 13th in National League

 

Do you own the land your car washes are built on ? If so what allowances do you make in your balance sheet etc for that or what rent do you charge the business.

There is absolutely no commercial sense in paying £6million for a piece of land that without the football club as tenant is probably worth less than a million. Rhodes & Lawn bought the office block then immediately sold them at profit using another company. Why didn't they keep them in BCFC and rent them out to offset the ground rent.

Not owning our own training ground means very little in the grand scheme of things. If we owned it we would have a mortgage on it - commercial mortgages are 5% plus rates, often higher, so the mortgage would cost as much if not more than the rent. If we had paid cash for it that money would have come off player budget or put us in debt. The facilities are excellent and installed/ paid for by someone else. We have very little restriction on use.

It being at a school is not relevant to anything apart from your silly notion that we have to own everything we use.

Sometimes, renting things makes more commercial sense than buying. For instance, is your car on a lease ? Do you lease the equipment your business uses ?

 

Early days, but I fear that this season will be a hugely frustrating one. The only thing we really seem to be lacking is that extra bit of quality up front and I think this will end up being another wasted year, for a lack of that extra bit of meaningful ambition. We keep hearing how we're far too big for this division, we have 15k at home 1-2k away every week. But what difference does it make if we're setting similar budgets to the vast majority of other clubs in the league? And I'm not talking about setting unsustainable budgets with high salary costs that put the club at risk, but surely we have the financial capability to find that extra couple of hundred grand to go and find a talented striker that adds the final piece of the jigsaw? Do it right and not only does it boost our chances of going up, maybe it leads to a profitable sell on in a year or twos time.

Hugely frustrating. I just don't see us getting out of this league until we add more quality and accept that it comes at a cost. Until our 'size' materialises in a financial advantage, then the whole 'too big for league 2' narrative is just nonsense.