It’s not every day you can claim to have made history by helping save a football club from the brink of liquidation. Yet, that happened to us this week.
For the past year myself, Matt and the sports team here at Hatch have been working with the Pompey Supporters’ Trust – a collection of passionate Portsmouth FC fans who were desperate to pull their club out of administration and ultimately save it from liquidation. To do this, they launched their own bid for fan ownership of the club.
Working closely with the bid team, we helped execute a clear, honest and open media and consumer relations campaign to inform the fans and the media of their hopes and dreams of creating the biggest fan own club in the country. Our brief was to launch and promote the pledge scheme, where by fans could purchase a share of the club and help fund the proposed fan ownership model the Trust were hopeful of implementing. We also communicated various updates on the bid to the media, ensuring a transparent approach and one which kept the fans in the know at all times.
After almost a year of working with the team, on Wednesday 10th April at the Royal High Courts of Justice we achieved our sole aim – put Portsmouth FC back into the hands of its fans. Run by the fans, for the fans, Portsmouth FC is now the largest fan owned club in the English Football League.
We’d like to take this opportunity to firstly congratulate the fans, whom without their unconditional support of their football club this would not have been possible. Secondly, we’d like to thank the media for their support over the last 12 months, enabling us to speak openly to football fans about updates on the bid. And finally, a huge pat on the back to the entire bid team and the administrators for their tireless work and belief that this could be achieved, as well as letting us make history with them. It is certainly a day I will not forget in a hurry!
Wednesday was indeed a very exciting day in Hatch’s history, not only for the record amount of media interviews we were faced with, but we are now the proud new owners of a piece of Portsmouth FC too! Having been completely won over by the bid team, yes we absolutely pledged and purchased a share in the club. Party at Fratton Park anyone?
Play Up Pompey!
