Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[standupforthemotherwell]

With the nature of how donations are set up to the WS, how confident can they be that the entire membership were given the opportunity to vote? Some of those donations would have been set up a decade ago under old email addresses etc which would affect the turnout.

 

My dad contributed a lump sum and then monthly payments until he died a couple of years back. I contacted the well society at the time to take him off the membership list but how many others succumbed to COVID or otherwise passed away yet are being included in the figures? Maybe something to look at if there are consistently low response rates as you would generally expect people to be more engaged with something they have financially contributed to rather than other survey types.

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

12 minutes ago, Swello said:

Regardless of this vote - I think the club and society would have continued to speak to the investors anyway quite honestly. The real vote is when we know what the proposals are and at that point, I'd be extremely unlikely to vote to go below 51% unless it was a ridiculously good offer - but for now, they can talk to who they want IMO.

I must admit to having that thought too. Like when John Boyle asked the cooper stand to move for Skippy Sunday, then when they voted no, he moved them without consultation for the next one. 

[Handsome_Devil]

10 minutes ago, Wellin said:

Don't you think that fans might have voted yes to outside investment for a reason? I completely understand that some fans are against it but others clearly aren't. I voted yes and obviously we will need to see what any outside investment option comprises of before making a decision. I completely get that the society are trying to engage fans at this point in time.

They'll absolutely have their reasons but I think the chance of getting a comically good, trustworthy offer to justify giving up control is absolutely tiny. Compared to the definite risk of floating along without direction not it's worth doing, we've basically bought a lottery ticket with a very high opportunity cost.

It should only takes a brief glance at the numbers for anyone to be incredibly sceptical of outside investment. I find the notion we'll be better off with an investor taking money out the club ridiculous tbh and their other route to profit, through capital gains, only marginally less so.

[thisGRAEME]

27 minutes ago, Busta Nut said:

What does anyone who wants an outside investor think the realistic outcomes are?

That we'll win the league.

Like how when we voted for VAR then we'd only get decisions that we like.

[Wellin]

4 minutes ago, Handsome_Devil said:

They'll absolutely have their reasons but I think the chance of getting a comically good, trustworthy offer to justify giving up control is absolutely tiny. Compared to the definite risk of floating along without direction not it's worth doing, we've basically bought a lottery ticket with a very high opportunity cost.

It should only takes a brief glance at the numbers for anyone to be incredibly sceptical of outside investment. I find the notion we'll be better off with an investor taking money out the club ridiculous tbh and their other route to profit, through capital gains, only marginally less so.

The bottom line is though obviously. Some people clearly couldn't be bothered voting. If I had strong opinions either way I'd have made sure I voted. 

[Donald_Trumpet]

Just now, Wellin said:

The bottom line is though obviously. Some people clearly couldn't be bothered voting. If I had strong opinions either way I'd have made sure I voted. 

The apparent apathy in voting, could this be viewed as a lack of trust or lack of belief in the WS, a fairly recently appointed new board should have been a springboard for optimism.
I personally have doubts about some on the WS board, just my opinion of course

[thisGRAEME]

5 minutes ago, Wellin said:

The bottom line is though obviously. Some people clearly couldn't be bothered voting. If I had strong opinions either way I'd have made sure I voted. 

I also suspect that a huge amount of WS emails go into junk, into old inboxes, or to folk who don't look at their emails more than once a week.

That's not apathy, it's just not having a clue that it's an issue. Would be curious to see the open rates.

[Swello]

is 35%+ not a decent rate of return for this sort of thing generally? I'm sure I read that what is considered "good" in a survey is way lower than you think. Turnout is a measure for elections - not really the same thing.

[well fan for life]

18 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

That we'll win the league.

 

[Wellin]

9 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

I also suspect that a huge amount of WS emails go into junk, into old inboxes, or to folk who don't look at their emails more than once a week.

That's not apathy, it's just not having a clue that it's an issue. Would be curious to see the open rates.

Mine don't go into junk and Im with Yahoo who are notorious for putting emails in spam folders. I get the point you are making but if someone was on twitter (and I get not everyone is) they'll have seen the tweets about the issue as well. Plus there was a three week timescale between the original communication and the vote as far as I'm aware. Of course there's been apathy, the voting figures show that some fans didn't care enough to vote at this point. Excluding the people who may have missed this as you say. 

[thisGRAEME]

4 minutes ago, Swello said:

is 35%+ not a decent rate of return for this sort of thing generally? I'm sure I read that what is considered "good" in a survey is way lower than you think. Turnout is a measure for elections - not really the same thing.

Anything above 5% is really good for click through rates, I think?

Sport is a weird one though, but a 35% click through rate is... a lot. 

[StAndrew7]

11 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

I also suspect that a huge amount of WS emails go into junk, into old inboxes, or to folk who don't look at their emails more than once a week.

That's not apathy, it's just not having a clue that it's an issue. Would be curious to see the open rates.

Yeah, the survey data would be really interesting to see.

I'm really hoping the result/turnout motivates people to get more involved, if they can/are able to (like, there may well be a number of members who are sadly no longer with us, who still receive e-mails to a long since forgotten e-mail account).

Like, I'm not sure if I were a WS Board member I'd be comfortable voting on behalf of a 72% block of shares within the club if the turnout for a final investment vote is less than 50% of its membership.

How can they say they're representing the views of their members if less than half of them voted? Like, surely there needs to be minimum turnout requirements for something with such large repercussions? I guess that depends on the articles under which the Society was drawn up.

[Pettigrew]

6 minutes ago, StAndrew7 said:

Yeah, the survey data would be really interesting to see.

I'm really hoping the result/turnout motivates people to get more involved, if they can/are able to (like, there may well be a number of members who are sadly no longer with us, who still receive e-mails to a long since forgotten e-mail account).

Like, I'm not sure if I were a WS Board member I'd be comfortable voting on behalf of a 72% block of shares within the club if the turnout for a final investment vote is less than 50% of its membership.

How can they say they're representing the views of their members if less than half of them voted? Like, surely there needs to be minimum turnout requirements for something with such large repercussions? I guess that depends on the articles under which the Society was drawn up.

Do we have any sense of the membership numbers who would be entitled to vote eg not Junior Steel etc?  Sorry if I've missed that somewhere in the discussion over last few weeks.

[Ceiling Granny]

28 minutes ago, Wellin said:

The bottom line is though obviously. Some people clearly couldn't be bothered voting. If I had strong opinions either way I'd have made sure I voted. 

I think that’s exactly the point though, some people when faced with that question wouldn’t have had a strong opinion based on the information at hand. I don’t think that puts them in a “can’t be bothered” category to be honest. 

[Vietnam91]

I just feel looking at how things have panned out, all this vote has achieved is put the club in a deepening state of limbo when there was zero need to.

I would have had no issue if the WS as a group behind the fan ownership model, not wanting to sell and committed to the idea to be more partisan rather than as objective in the email.

[well fan for life]

20 minutes ago, Pettigrew said:

Do we have any sense of the membership numbers who would be entitled to vote eg not Junior Steel etc?  Sorry if I've missed that somewhere in the discussion over last few weeks.

I would imagine there's slim-to-no chance we'll ever get to see the data behind the responses but I do agree with you. What's the split here between active members who are contributing vs historical members who joined at the beginning but have stopped paying. And, as you point out, I've seen folk buying their newborn kids a Junior Steel membership which obviously rules them out of voting. 

 

[thisGRAEME]

2 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

 I've seen folk buying their newborn kids a Junior Steel membership which obviously rules them out of voting. 

 

I'd argue little Fras' vote matters just as much as mine, if not more, I'm a fucking ghoul.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

1 hour ago, CoF said:

My revelation the other night finding out it was Sam Nicholson who, 8 years ago, was on the receiving end of one of the worst tackles in Scottish football history. I always remembered the picture but never made the connection to him. 

Just googled it there and aye I'm the same. Hope he got it right up them then.

[Wellin]

6 minutes ago, well fan for life said:

I would imagine there's slim-to-no chance we'll ever get to see the data behind the responses but I do agree with you. What's the split here between active members who are contributing vs historical members who joined at the beginning but have stopped paying. And, as you point out, I've seen folk buying their newborn kids a Junior Steel membership which obviously rules them out of voting. 

 

I think the first thing people need to know is who was entitled to vote. Whether people who contributed in the beginning got a vote or not. The email doesn't make it clear. 

[Wellin]

36 minutes ago, Ceiling Granny said:

I think that’s exactly the point though, some people when faced with that question wouldn’t have had a strong opinion based on the information at hand. I don’t think that puts them in a “can’t be bothered” category to be honest. 

But the vote was about the well society potentially losing their majority share - that's why I voted.  I do think some people won't have cared either way.  Apathy is an issue when it comes to people making decisions. Obviously there's going to be another vote once the prospective investors terms are known and members will have the opportunity to make a further decision at that point. 

Edited March 1 by Wellin