Investing in football: a Real Oviedo shareholders tale

Last Wednesday, in a move that I still don't fully understand, I became a shareholder in the Spanish football club Real Oviedo.

In terms of my relationship with football, I should probably lay my cards on the table. I am a Nottingham Forest fan. Anyone of a certain age with a passing interest in the game will understand that I'm familiar with disappointment.

Having watched Forest fall from the heights of back-to-back European Cup wins to the depths of English football's third tier I know, all too well, the emotions involved in witnessing a distressing decline.



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This doubtless explains why some sense of faded glamour or a struggle against adversity tends to attract me to a club. To illustrate this point, my favorite Italian team is Sampdoria, currently lying 14th in Serie A. Winning, as they say, isn't everything.

I realise this is perverse, but I've never been able to understand the appeal of supporting a football giant, going into a season in the confident expectation of wins and trophies.

Jerry Maguire

So a couple of weeks ago, when I first heard of the plight of Oviedo, something clicked.

I found myself Googling the club, reading about the city of Oviedo, admiring the jagged hills of Asturias.

My attention was piqued by Sid Lowe, the British journalist whose animated appreciation of Spanish football has brought La Liga to life for many outside Spain.

Read: Can Twitter help save Spanish soccer club Real Oviedo

Lowe ignited the international campaign to save the club, while also warning that investors were highly unlikely to see any return.

To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, he had me at 'unlikely'.

Here was a potentially lost cause that I was powerless to resist. I stepped up my research and prepared to delve into the insanity of football club ownership.

By the time I was ready to take the plunge, Real's global coalition of the willing had swelled considerably and the club was almost half way to safety.

The share offer's website looked reassuringly professional, and was helpfully available in English.

Estadio Carlos Tartiere

I had initially thought of just buying one share, but then I discovered that owning four shares would entitle me to attend the annual general meeting. Influence, I thought.

I imagined myself turning up at the airport, being feted as an arriving hero and bought drinks in Oviedo's tapas bars just for being me.

I rejected any thoughts that this scenario was somewhat far-fetched. I inputted my passport number, transferred the cash, sat back and enjoyed the warm glow of owning something of no apparent value whatsoever.

The weird thing is that it really was a glow.

I had another look at the impressive Estadio Carlos Tartiere and smiled to myself.

I wondered how much flights would cost, and how I would persuade my wife that a weekend in Asturias was a good idea. I started following Oviedo types on Twitter. I re-tweeted a link to the club's soon-to-be-opened online shop.

Mexican Tycoon

As the club's deadline day of November 17 approached, I kept an eye on the increasingly positive news coming from northern Spain; this people's club, now partly my club, looked close to completing its path to safety.

Then came the news of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's intervention.

As a push over the line goes it could hardly be more emphatic, and suddenly the need to gather more shareholders became irrelevant. Oviedo was in the clear; 13,000 shareholders and the world's richest man had made it happen.

However. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this new development.

The idea that a multi-billionaire was now bankrolling the club was anathema to me; I still feel that the age of the oligarch has done little but damage to football, at least in England.

Read: World's richest man saves Spanish soccer club

But it also opened up a world of possibilities. Even Nottingham Forest have super-rich owners now, and at the City Ground the Al Hasawi family have appeared at pains to show the club's fans that they intend to do things 'the right way'. Maybe Carlos Slim would be the same.

So far my only proof of ownership is my receipt from Paypal, which almost a week on makes me slightly uneasy but I hope is just a sign of how unbelievably successful this escapade has been for the club.

I have a genuine feeling of being part of something, and a sense that this is the start of an exciting story. I also fully intend to make it to a game at the earliest available opportunity.

I suppose I should probably think about how I explain to my wife that I've spent a chunk of our weekly shopping money on a Spanish third division football team. She's a Napoli fan; surely she'll understand?

For now though I'm waiting patiently for my share certificate to arrive in the post.

Whatever happens at the very least I have to buy a Real Oviedo mug.



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