The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Matt Slater.

Welcome to the Business of Sport podcast on The Athletic.

Just me this week, no Mark Chapman.

And in this week's episode, our focus is on QPR, Queens Park Rangers, who play in the championship, English football's second tier. Now, later in the pod, we'll speak to Les Ferdinette. Once, one of those feared strikers in the Premier League, a QPR legend, played for England, too, but he's now the club's director of football. He's going to tell us about their plans to invest in the training ground and develop more young talent to feed into the first team and to make their whole business model far more sustainable. But before that, we're going to hear from Ruben Naldingham, who's the vice chairman. He's a big shareholder at QPR.

He's also a shareholder at LAFC in MLS, which is now MLS's most valuable franchise.

So a significant player in football on both sides of the Atlantic.

As I mentioned, he's Malaysian, educated in London, increasingly spending time here as well.

He came into QPR in 2011. He was part of the ownership group with Tony Fernandez, who of course owns Air Malaysia. It was a sort of relatively kind of backseat partner for the first few years,

but in 2016, became co-chairman with Tony Fernandez and did that role for a couple of years before.

Stepping back a bit, their partner, Amir Batia, of the Mithau family, another very wealthy, powerful

family, Indian family based also here in the UK, is chairman now.

But Ruben's very involved, very involved, as I said, in both of his clubs. And I started

off by asking him about the club's plans, QPR's plans, to offer them the chance to invest

in the future via the QPR bond, which is an attempt to raise some money for the training

and grow up. Now, whilst we talk a very good game at the Business Sport podcast, I must say that we are not independent financial advisors.

And if there's any of you out there that attempted to invest in the QPR bond, please get your own advice.

Reuben, thanks very much for talking to us. Let's start off with the Bond. Explain that. What's what it's about, what you're trying to achieve, how QPR fans can get involved.

So what it's about really is we have always wanted our own training ground. We didn't have one when we bought the club. And it took us a while to

find the right site. And then it took us a while to get planning permission on the second

site because the first site we couldn't get planning permission. And now we found the right side

and we got planning permission on that one. And now we need to develop it. So that's what the bond

...