Is the Burnley takeover a good deal? + Hashtag United's Spencer Owen on another non-league season cancelled
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark Chapman is joined by The Athletic's Matt Slater to look at our exclusive story on the recent Burnley takeover. Their new owners have only put in £15 million up front and the rest is leveraged debt. What does this mean and should Burnley fans be concerned?
Swansea City investor Jordan Gardener joins us to give us his considered view on the Burnley deal and context on the wider picture relating to increasing amounts of American capital investment in football.
We also speak to Spencer Owen of Hashtag United (22:40) about the increasingly difficult situation in non-league football as it appears a second consecutive season is going to be cancelled and expunged from the record books.
Spencer also gives us a fascinating insight into what it's like to have created a fully-fledged football club from scratch off the back of being a YouTube sensation and the club's ambitious vision for the future.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:06.1 | Hello, I'm Mark Chapman. |
| 0:07.4 | Welcome to the Business and Sport podcast on The Athletic. |
| 0:09.9 | Each week, we're taking you behind the curtain into the world of football business and other sports across the globe. |
| 0:15.5 | And alongside me as ever today, from The Athletic is the football news reporter Matt Slater. |
| 0:20.4 | We're going to look today at Matt's exclusive story |
| 0:23.3 | about the recent takeover at Burnley |
| 0:25.3 | with his revelation that the new owners |
| 0:28.0 | only borrowed £80 million and only put him £15 million up front |
| 0:33.1 | to get the deal done. |
| 0:34.6 | So should fans of Burnley or other clubs in similar situations be worried? |
| 0:38.7 | We'll speak to American investor in football clubs, Jordan Gardner, to find out. |
| 0:43.6 | We're also going to be joined by Spencer Owen of hashtag United. We'll hear about the ongoing |
| 0:47.8 | problems surrounding the future of non-league football. And we'll find out how he's managed to |
| 0:52.7 | build a football club entirely from scratch. |
| 0:55.5 | You can subscribe right now to The Athletic for just £3.99 a month. |
| 1:00.0 | Enjoyed great analysis and in-depth features from the very best football writers around, |
| 1:04.0 | as well as add free versions of all of our podcasts. |
| 1:07.1 | Just head to theathletic.com slash Ornstein and Chapman to sign up. |
| 1:14.8 | So Matt, your latest exclusive on The Athletic is the story surrounding the Burnley |
| 1:19.1 | takeover. And the headline with this is that the new owners ALK capital only putting |
| 1:23.1 | around £15 million up front to fund it. So explain how that works in the story for us first, |
... |
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