Finn Harps share scheme was launched in a blaze of publicity and goodwill last November.
Donegal Daily caught up with Harps Chairperson Ian Harkin recently for an update on how the scheme is going.
Harkin is pictured above with Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson and his wife Iris who visited Finn Park last week to check in on the first team at training and Harkin’s son Henri.
It’s four months now since the share scheme has been launched, how is that going for the club?
To date we have sold almost 1,700 memberships, we targeted to hit 3,000 before our next AGM which we hope to have in the coming weeks so we are a bit behind but we will be pushing hard now that the season has started again.
How far do you think the membership numbers will realistically go to?
The feedback we’ve had is that people think it’s a great idea but they just haven’t got around to it, so we will push now and try to hit that number before the AGM. Beyond that we need to get to 5k members before the club becomes sustainable. When we made the choice to really go for the membership model, the options were go wide with a large public ownership or go for private investors. We have stated we were open to private investment but we did not receive viable offers so we had to push with fan owned. It’s what feels right for the club but the public have to back it. If we don’t hit the 5k we still have to not just listen to offers but actively seek investment. If every current member committed to bringing in at least 2 more members we will get there, some people mentioned why didn’t we just charge €50 or €100, the whole point of this is to open up membership to a wider audience rather than going back to the same people, we aimed to make it attractive to someone who has never heard of Finn Harps but thought ‘hey it’s only €25, I like the idea of it, let’s find out more.’
In Ireland we are seeing competitor clubs in the first division receiving over €500,000+ investment per year to manage their clubs, if we were to replicate that just on membership fees we’d need to be at 20,000 members. The hope however would be that you can upsell different elements like merchandise, LOI TV, match tickets, 500 club etc or lottos to our members. A lot of people may not realise that 60% of the revenue from LOITV goes directly to the club, watching on a dodgy box is not supporting the club, it’s harming the club. LOITV is watched right around the world and anyone interested in becoming the main sponsor of broadcasting please get in touch.
We currently have around 500 people contributing €300 plus per annum between our 500 club and Lotto, if we manage to get that number to 1,700 it gets us there too. There is more than one way to skin it but the stark reality is to be able to compete we have to start matching that level of investment or we will get left behind.
What do you think the appeal of being a shareholder is for people?
For different people it’s different things:
– supporting Donegal’s only senior team
– supporting a pathway to players from Donegal to careers in professional football
– the adventure of supporting a league of Ireland, LOI teams in the premier have with a 40% chance of playing in Europe
– recognising the community work the club does in the county
– fan owned is important to them, having that input and being able to be involved
It’s been a tough start to the season, how will that affect things if results are slow to come?
A few years ago we changed our strategy with the club, historically we focused on getting promotion at all cost, we focused then on staying up at all cost so we recruited far and wide. We chose experienced players 24 yr olds +, players that we gave a shop window to, to allow them progress their career in exchange for 1 year contracts. We had no protection for the club in terms of longer contracts, no pathway for younger players, everything was focused on the present and unfortunately it became unsustainable financially. Off season was exciting though, with all these foreign players being announced.
Our new strategy involves employing a full time head coach, someone with a background in player development, providing a pathway to our academy players was key. If we are to compete long term we have to develop an income stream from developing and selling players. That takes time. We have seen some great progression from our Academy in the past two years, Oisin, Gavin and Kevin have started games all 3 came through the Academy and a further 4 have gained valuable minutes, Max, Josh, Aarron and Joel Bradley Walsh. At least 3 other players will feature significantly throughout the year. When these academy players did come on it was notable that standards didn’t drop, players are getting contracts because they earn them, they deserve them, if they aren’t of the standard yet they wont be given longer term contracts. When I first came in we had one player in our first team squad who came through the Academy, now we have 10.
We also have Conor, Tony, Patrick and Mikey living in the county. These are all players living amongst us, neighbours, friends, relatives getting a chance to develop a career playing for their local team helping us progress whilst also putting themselves in the shop window.
We’ve seen players now be recognised by the international team managers, in the republic, Oisin Cooney, Aaron McLaughlin and Sean Patton (academy graduate) playing for the under 19s, Kevin Jordan playing on the Irish Colleges team, Daniel Cunningham playing for the U18 schools team, Gavin McAteer getting called up to the Under 17s and Kyra Gavigan playing for the women’s U15 schools team, and in Northern Ireland Corey Sheridan for the Under 17s, Lukas Doherty and Odhran McHugh for the under 15s. We’ve seen players being invited for trials at premier league clubs.
At the international under 19 level, playing senior football is almost a prerequisite, the underage managers specifically state they will prioritise players playing senior football over players playing in their underage level. There is a cost to the club in investing and giving those chances to players and there is a cost to the players as we ask for longer contracts, that’s the cost of getting in the shop window. We have to protect the club and get a return on our investment and use that to provide a pathway for more players. Our off season going forward will be pretty boring in comparison as we will have players tied down long term. Announcements of 10 players from different countries like we had in 2022 will be a thing of the past, we will still strengthen our panel with external recruitment but development and sales will be a core part of our football strategy.
With regards to our budget we are at our maximum capacity, whilst we are prioritising management time on the new stadium, development expenses there are paid from specific stadium fundraisers, we are not weakening player budget, our budget is simply what we can afford. The strategy to increase that is to build our new stadium and increase attendance numbers with an improved experience and develop an income stream from selling players, using that to strengthen the team, whilst retaining a pathway.
People talk about Brexit and how that is changing football in Ireland, can you explain more?
Pre Brexit players used to go to the UK at a very young age, FIFA have a training compensation policy so clubs in Ireland received very little money in exchange for transferring players. Domestically if you sell a player in Ireland under 23 you are entitled to €300 per year, this rule is enforced by FIFA so letters are sent out directly to clubs to pay out on training compensation. If an academy player under 23 moves to the UK now they qualify for an international training compensation €10,000 for every year they have been in the academy, so someone leaving at 18 who has been in our Academy since they were 13 the club can earn €50,000 in Training compensation. If that player signs a professional contract that number jumps to over €220,000. In most scenarios that amount is not paid out, a token amount is paid and performance payments are built in but more importantly sell on clauses are built in, so it will be another 3 or 4 years after transferring that potential revenue may arrive. That is where the real money is made. Gavin Bazanu has earned Shamrock Rovers over €5m to date in total fees. Our current U20s team is the first team since Brexit in 2020 that will have reached 18, they all joined when we had a National Under 13s team. Another way of looking at it is we need one Gavin Bazanu every 10 years.
Is there too much focus on development and not enough on winning matches?
Our budget dictates everything, we cannot spend more than we are bringing in. The landscape in Ireland has changed massively now that the solidarity payments have changed, every club in the premier and in Northern Ireland has a head start on us, 11 clubs in Northern Ireland received €217k this year from solidarity and 9 teams in Ireland received €288k, put in perspective that would double our playing budget.
Finn Harps are probably only second to Sligo Rovers in fundraising in the whole country for fundraising. That is a massive testament to our volunteers and board members, our club raises over €200k per year for the club. There is a limit to how much people can fundraise, how many events can be held, we cannot keep going back to the same people asking for more, so the business strategy, the focus on the new stadium and extra capacity, the footballing strategy and opening ourselves up to shareholders all around the world is important. Like any strategy it may work and it may not, personally, i’m excited, maybe that’s madness creeping in, but i see something pretty amazing happening, our Under 20s team beat Shelbourne on Saturday, our first team has 10 players on professional contracts that came through our academy, there is HUGE potential in some of those players to carve a career in football. Our girls teams are really doing well despite being only two years in. At the very bottom of our chain and right through the club there are some amazingly gifted players and coaches.
Irrespective of our budget, we all believe in our strategy, focus on development, on the stadium and investing in our Academy, it requires a lot of patience, but if we want to be sustainable we have to build proper foundations.
Will you look to change your strategy if results don’t start coming?
It’s hard not to notice some of the criticism, what I would say is that that criticism should not be directed at the players or management, our strategy is a board decision. If people disagree with it there is a mechanism for changing it and that’s buy a share and put your name forward for the board.
In the Dundalk game, we played against a team on double our playing budget, before Dundalk, Kerry had €1.5m invested in the off season and Treaty’s too is significantly higher than ours. In the Dundalk and Treaty game I thought in the majority of both games we were the better side, that gives me a lot of hope as we all know there is a lot more to come from these players. Time and experience will deliver that. Last Friday night we played Cobh, 9 of Cobh’s team played in the Premier Division, compared to 3 of ours. We matched them and a decision went against us, that’s football and as frustrating as it is our luck will come.
